


You Were My Silent Film

by earthinmywindow



Series: Dream Runners [5]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 07:20:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthinmywindow/pseuds/earthinmywindow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No attachment. No desires. No future. Those are Annie's cardinal rules living as a runaway with Reiner and Bertolt. Sex is a sport for her and men are disposable. But when she has sex with somebody she can't live without (who also happens to be the guy her big brother is in love with), her carefully maintained world order is threatened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Were My Silent Film

**Author's Note:**

> Part 5 of 8.
> 
> This part wound up being even longer than the last part, which doesn't really surprise me because it was always the longest in my head. Hopefully it reads well and won't feel tedious. In a way it is fitting since Annie's was the shortest (and admittedly weakest) of the first three sections.
> 
> That being said, I can't help feeling like this part may be a bit divisive. Not merely for the BertAnnie (which the summary hints at) but because of how the story unfolds. I will not apologize for the BertAnnie because this was an OT3 series from the start, but will offer up my reassurances that there is still more ReiBert (which I am aware is the more popular side of the OT3) in future installments.
> 
> Finally, I must express my overflowing appreciation and gratitude to all who have read this series. Thank you so much for putting up with my dense prose (which I fear is getting denser) and whimsical punctuation (which I fear is getting more whimsical) as well as my frequent references to music from the 90s, movies from the 80s, and books from all eras.
> 
> Please let me know what you think! Writing is just a hobby, but I am always trying to improve.

 

  
_From the Journal of Vanessa Braun, dated September 8th, 1987_   
  
_Seriously, how pointless is the first day of school? All you do is get your schedule and your locker and all of the teachers just go on and on about how hard their classes are going to be, which never turns out to be true. I got a decent schedule, I guess, except that I got Ms. Fludd for trig and she already said there’s going to be a quiz every single Friday. But I am taking AP English and Art History, which I am really excited about._

_The dumbest thing by far, though, was “Home Room.” They actually made us go around the room sharing our goals for the future, like we’re a bunch of kindergarteners and not high school seniors. Freddy Hannes got a laugh when he said he wants to have the kind of job where he “can be drunk off his ass all day and nobody will care.” I said he should aspire to be a cop or a security guard, but he thought I was joking (I wasn’t!)._   
  
_When it was my turn, I couldn’t think of just one goal so I gave them all: Lawyer, Doctor, Actress, Dancer, Teacher, Veterinarian, Writer, Mother. I don’t know why I did that since it made me sound like the kindergartener I claimed not to be just a few sentences ago. Sometimes, though, I am just so overwhelmed by how much I want to do and to be. The future is like a field of glittering jewels laid out before me and I want it all._   
  
_Naturally, my answer earned some commentary from my classmates. Freddy said only an extreme masochist would try to be both a doctor and a lawyer, which is probably true. Nick said you can’t be either and also be a mother. No wait, he said you can’t be either and also be a good mother. I may have told him to eat my shorts (but in less friendly terms) for which I have detention on Friday. I guess that’s probably not the best way to start senior year, but it couldn’t be helped. It was a crime of passion. _   
  
_P.S. Freddy apparently thought I was justified, too, and invited me to see Dirty Dancing after I get out of “the clink.” I’ve already seen it once, but it’s soooooo good._

* * *

  
  
“Annie...” The voice buzzed in her ear like a mosquito and she jerked her shoulder up to shoo it away, but almost immediately— _very_ like a mosquito—it came right back again. “Annie, wake up.”  
  
“Jus’ ten more minutes,” she mumbled into the crook of her elbow.  
  
“But the bus is unloading now. We have to get off. Annie, we’re here.”  
  
“Nnnn...” She grunted, which in her mind was an unambiguous response, and retreated deeper into the corner of her seat. And apparently her message was received because the voice shut up and let her slide back down into the soft, warm arms of sleep.  
  
Then she felt the jab—two fingers right in the sweet spot between the seventh and eighth ribs—and her reaction was automatic: spine snapping, eyes popping open, fist shooting out like a jack-in-the-box.  
  
“Ah!” The cry of pain came simultaneously with the crunch of knuckles on cartilage. “Annie, what the fuck?”  
  
“Shit! Sorry Bertl,” she said, awake and wide-eyed, watching Bertolt gingerly prod his aquiline nose with the tips of his fingers. He winced and she added, “Well don’t touch it, stupid. Look, I really am sorry. But you know I don’t respond well to being poked.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s why I tried to wake you up using my words first,” he said. One of his nostrils was ringed with red, bleeding, but not profusely. “I don’t think it’s broken,” he said on a note of cautious optimism then pouted. “But it really hurts.”  
  
“It’s supposed to hurt,” said Annie. “What if you’d been a mugger or a rapist?”  
  
Not wanting to argue a rhetorical question, Bertolt sighed in surrender and dropped the subject. “Come on, let’s grab our things and get going.”  
  
They stepped off the Greyhound bus with one standard-issue JanSport backpack apiece, carrying only enough supplies to get them through the next twenty-four hours. Most of their possessions—they didn't have very many—were with Reiner in the old blue Toyota, which they’d somehow managed to keep using despite the various incriminating identification numbers attached to it.

Tomorrow Reiner would come to pick them up, bearing good or bad news about their next destination, but for today it was just the two of them.  
  
As much as she’d resisted being woken up, Annie was glad to be off of that bus. It had been a five-hour ride with only one short break at a rest stop midway, and the bus had smelled funny and the air-conditioning was blasting a nonstop icy stream down on her head the whole way. But, ah, just to stretch out her limbs again was fantastic—she felt like an old ventriloquist’s dummy unpacked from its suitcase, joints all stiff and rusty.  
  
“I guess that’s the hotel Reiner was talking about,” Bertolt said, shielding his eyes with one hand as he squinted across the highway at a two-story beige and turquoise building.  
  
“I guess so,” Annie replied unenthusiastically. According to the neon-limned (currently unlit) sign outside, it was not a hotel but a motel: _Route 66 Sleep-Easy Motel! Vacancy! Pool! Color TV!_ So many exclamation points. To call the place tacky would be putting it mildly. It looked like something out of _National Lampoon’s Vacation_ , an ancient movie Mom had pushed on her and Reiner as a “classic” when they’d both been sick with strep throat. The cracked stucco exterior, shedding potato chip sized flakes of what was almost certainly lead-based paint, gave little cause for excitement, but at least it was only for one night.  
  
“Well, at least it’s only for one night,” Bertolt said, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “And it’s not like we haven’t stayed in nastier places for longer.”  
  
That much was true. Since leaving Philadelphia the three of them had been living a nomadic life: seven months of floating from place to place, with the blue Toyota serving as their ship without a harbor. Occasionally they’d stop and spend a few days, maybe a week or two, at a campground or in a hotel if they could afford it—and many of those were indeed far filthier and more decrepit than the one she was looking at now—but it was never too long before they were back on the road, following another vapor-thin money trail.  
  
Through frugality and sacrifice they had stretched the income saved from their fights, and they augmented it with any cash they could bring in doing odd jobs in the towns they passed through, but even with their abstemious lifestyle, funds were hard to maintain. Food and gas were expensive. They needed real jobs and a permanent home. And that was what Reiner was working on now. He was meeting with an acquaintance of Armin’s, a student at Washington University—Annie thought his name was Marco, but she couldn’t remember for sure—who might have a place for them to stay in St. Louis, Missouri.  
  
Annie tried not to get her hopes up too high, as they’d had some false leads in the past seven months—the basement in Cleveland that turned out to be a meth lab, the close call in Chicago when their potential new landlord thought he recognized them from a poster—but she was so fucking sick of being on the road.  
  
Seven months wasn’t long in the lifetime of the universe, or even the lifetime of an individual human, but that was only when you looked at the big picture, took it all in from a distance and considered the past and the future, which Annie didn’t do. _Couldn’t_ do. The past was gone and the future unimaginable. She existed only in the present and seven months felt like an eternity for her present conditions to have persisted. Seven months without martial arts. Seven months without sex. And since her two major sources of distraction had been unavailable to her, a pernicious sense of meaninglessness had begun to creep into her psyche, like an invasive species—kudzu or cane toad or snakehead fish. No, that wasn’t right—that metaphor implied that it was a new feeling, which it wasn’t. It was the old emptiness, the void that had been there since before they ran, the one she’d kept at bay by keeping her body occupied.  
  
Her stomach shuddered and made a croaking noise. At least that was an emptiness she could satisfy, since Reiner had left them enough per diem for a good meal. “Come on, Bertl,” she said. “Let’s dump our bags in the room and go find something to eat.”  
  
“Ah, right.” He shouldered both of their backpacks even though Annie hadn’t asked him to carry hers and together they crossed the highway.  
  
In the motel’s tiny front office, Bertolt spoke to the manager, a grizzled middle-aged man with thinning hair and a pot gut that didn’t quite fit within the confines of his stained t-shirt. It amused Annie to see Bertl trying to fill in for Reiner, who usually did all the talking. He stammered and was overly polite and really he should have just let her deal with these things because she was perfectly comfortable being assertive while he clearly was not; but for his own arcane, pride-related reasons, he insisted. While he meekly tried to voice objections to a previously unmentioned fee, Annie eyed a rack of brittle, yellowing travel brochures: _Camping and Hiking in Missouri, Fishing the Mississippi River, Family Fun in The Show-Me State._  
  
“But we need a room with _two_ beds,” Bertolt was saying to the manager.  
  
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t give you a double for that price,” the manager said, sounding as gleefully dishonest as a used car salesman (and not one bit sorry). “If you want the double it’ll be an extra fifty for the night.”  
  
“But the sign outside—” Bertolt tried to protest but the manager held up a beefy hand to silence him and shook his head.  
  
“Look kid, that sign’s still showin' last year’s rates. I wish I could give you a discount since you seem like a nice guy, but these things are regulated by the, uh, the Federal Motel Agency. My hands are tied.”  
  
Bertolt made a noise of distress that wasn’t even a word—it sounded like “meep.”  
  
Sighing, Annie stepped up to the desk and elbowed him aside. “Okay Joe,” she said, using the name on the little plaque in front of the manager. “You’ve had your fun, now cut the bullshit and stop trying to fleece my naive friend. We are getting a double room and we are getting it for the price listed on your sign or I’ll file a complaint with the American Hotel and Lodging Association, which is a _real_ association. Got it?” She had a special technique for situations like this, an aggressive stance and hard stare that got her results despite her small stature.  
  
“Fine, fine,” Manager Joe said, throwing up his hands, defeated. “Honestly I was just trying to do milky milquetoast here a favor, force him into a single room with his pretty little traveling companion, if you catch my drift." He winked and clucked his tongue as if he expected her to be amused by this. "But now that you’ve opened your mouth, I can see why he wants two beds. I’m just sorry I can’t put a wall between them for him.” He punctuated his unfunny joke with a coarse laugh.  
  
“Just give us the key,” Annie said, digging a wad of bills from the pocket of her jeans and shoving it across the desk.  
  
The manager snatched up the money then swiveled around in his chair to pluck a key from the grid of pegs on the wall behind him and tossed it at her. “Here ya go, A-6. Enjoy your stay.”  
  
Annie took the key and didn’t say thank you, though, much to her annoyance, Bertolt did say it before following her out of the office with their bags. “I could have handled that by myself, you know,” he said to her as they tromped past a swimming pool clouded with green scum.  
  
“No you couldn’t,” she answered flatly without turning around. She was still bristling from her exchange with that asshole manager and was in no mood to humor Bertolt about his negotiation skills. Their room was on the second floor so she climbed the stairs with peevish stomps.  
  
“Yes I could, but you didn’t even give me a chance.” He was genuinely upset about this.  
  
Annie sighed. Why couldn’t he just let it slide like he had the whole punch in the nose thing? “Fine, you could,” she said just to quiet him. “Sorry I interfered, I was eager to get our room. And look, here it is, A-6—so let’s put all the unpleasantness behind us and try to make the best of this.”  
  
“Alright, fair enough, you win as always,” he mumbled behind her as she turned the key in the lock.  
  
The door opened with a breath of musty air and Annie flicked on the light switch—hey, the lights actually worked!—before stepping inside. The room was icky, but not vile: dingy wallpaper, kitschy landscape painting in a chipped frame, splotchy carpet, and a faint but persistent odor of mildew. There were two beds, as demanded, dressed in identically hideous paisley patterned covers. At places like this, it was best not to think about what sorts of things past guests may have done in the beds, but she liked to believe twin beds probably had less dubious histories than their full-sized kin.  
  
Bertolt dropped their bags to the floor and flopped down on the bed closer to the door. He released a long, breathy sigh that fell somewhere between relief and exhaustion on the spectrum of emotional noises. “Any thoughts about what you want to eat? It’s almost five so I guess that makes it dinner.”  
  
“I dunno,” she said. “You’re the one who was awake while we were riding in, see anything good passing outside the window?”  
  
“I don’t remember,” he said, sitting up on the bed. “Why don’t we just go out walking and see what we find?”  
  
Annie honestly didn’t care; she was too hungry to be picky. “That’s fine,” she said. “I’m going to use the bathroom first.”  
  
The bathroom was pretty much equivalent to the rest of the room in terms of decor and tidiness, but it had a reassuring bleach smell and—of critical importance—there was a shower, which she was very much looking forward to using. After she emerged, Bertolt went to take his turn and she unzipped her backpack to retrieve her purse. It was a nice purse, designer (though she couldn’t say which one), which had been a gift from one of her Philly guys—Todd or Ted, or maybe it was Tad. She did a quick inventory of the contents: wallet, zippered pouch with Tampax and Trojans, pocket knife, an Altoids tin she used to store pills, and Luna.  
  
Ah, Luna. The old wolf was little more than a rag now, but her lack of stuffing made it easier for Annie to tote her around surreptitiously, like some old woman who always kept an embroidered handkerchief on her person. It was a childish and embarrassing habit, she knew, but everyone was entitled to have one, right? Ever since she’d gotten Luna back, Annie just felt better knowing she was nearby. Luna was her innocence, the last lingering shred of her childhood and the only thing she had left that had been given to her by Dad. Like Luna’s gray fur, the memory of that day had been worn away to nothing, but just knowing that he had been the one to give her Luna was enough to link them together, eternally, in her mind.  
  
She picked up the limp, empty skin and took a deep inhale of that wonderful, nostalgic smell then tucked it away again just as Bertolt stepped out of the bathroom.  
  
“You ready?” he asked.  
  
“Yeah,” she said, snapping her purse closed. “I’m ready.”

  
It was September but it was still warm outside, Indian Summer in Missouri. The sky had taken on a faint lavender tint in the brief time since they’d disembarked from the bus and there was a fringe of ominous cloud formation at the horizon—a storm was coming, perhaps, but not for several hours.  
  
Annie breathed in the melange of car exhaust and tarry asphalt and sun-baked cat grass as she and Bertolt picked their way alongside the supposedly scenic Route 66 in search of food. They said nothing to each other, both too fatigued from the ride in to keep up conversation and walk at the same time. Annie could tell that Bertolt was in a low mood—actually, he had been for a while now, but the absence of Reiner, who had a knack for keeping Bertl aloft, made it especially pronounced. She had an inkling as to the cause, but didn’t know how best to help him solve it, so for now she stayed silent.  
  
After about a mile—a rough estimate based on years of running—they came across a restaurant. And what luck, it was one of those breakfast places: Levi’s Pancake Shack. Between Bertolt’s penchant for pancakes and waffles and her own love of bacon, it was almost like kismet. Or would’ve been, if the very notion of kismet wasn’t complete and utter horse shit, right up there with astrology and ouija.  
  
“Breakfast for dinner?” Bertolt asked, looking up at the tall, meant-to-be-seen-from-miles-away sign.  
  
“You read my mind,” said Annie. It felt good to be on the same mental wavelength, even on as mundane a matter as dinner.  
  
The place looked small on the outside but had ample seating inside and only a few tables were occupied—mostly by patrons from the blue-haired, bifocal-wearing, over sixty set—so Annie and Bertolt got prompt service, a young waiter ushering them straight to a booth and depositing laminated menus into their hands.  
  
“Good evening, folks,” said the waiter, flashing an eager, customer service smile. “I’m Eld. Can I get you anything to drink to start out?”  
  
Looking past his plastic-fantastic smile, Eld was an attractive guy. His face, like his name, was a touch elvish, a touch of that vintage Orlando Bloom—milky skin, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, nose and eyes and ears just a teensy bit pointy. And he had a small patch of beard on his chin that Annie found very appealing. Watching him shift his weight from one leg to the other as he pulled a notepad and pencil from his neat black apron, she couldn’t help thinking about how long it had been since she’d played this game. Those seven long, celibate months.  
  
Did she dare target him? Big brother wasn’t watching, but Bertolt was. Bertolt was cool, though (or at least she thought he probably was). Why not have a little fun? Lord knows she could use some.  
  
“Hey Eld,” she said, donning a cool smirk. “I’m Sheena Wallace and this here is my cousin, Utgard. To drink, how about you bring me whatever you think I’ll like? And make it something _sumptuous_.”  
  
“Ah, sure,” he said with a chuckle. “Cool names, by the way. Very exotic. And for you, uh, Utgard?” he asked, pointing the tip of his pencil at Bertolt. “Am I saying that right?”  
  
“You’re saying it just fine,” Bertolt answered tightly, lips twitching with the effort not to frown. “I’ll have orange juice, please.”  
  
“Gotcha,” said Eld, cheerily oblivious. “I’ll be right back with those.”  
  
Once their waiter had left, Bertolt ceased holding back and scowled openly. “Utgard? What kind of name is that? That’s not even a word.”  
  
Annie shrugged. “Sure it’s a word. It’s the name of some old castle in Bavaria. I saw it once in an issue of National Geographic and for some reason it stuck with me. Guess I thought it sounded cool.”  
  
“But why tell the waiter that’s my name? And why call yourself Sheena? He doesn’t know who we are.”  
  
“Exactly,” said Annie. “Nobody knows us here so I thought I’d make us sound more interesting. No harm in that. It’s just for fun.”  
  
“I don’t see what’s so fun about it,” Bertolt said. He was in a huff, slumping in his vinyl padded seat, arms folded, mouth pouting like a petulant child as his eyes darted askance. “And how come I have to be your cousin?”  
  
“I don’t want him to think we’re _together_ ,” she replied and quickly regretted it when she heard how harsh her insistence sounded. “Oh you know what I mean, Bertl.”  
  
“Why not just tell him I’m your big sister?” he said in a sour grumble. “Since you clearly don’t even consider me a man.”  
  
“This again?” The accusation that she didn’t consider him a man was one that Bertolt trotted out at times when he was feeling particularly self-pitying, typically due to some unrelated underlying vulnerability. Annie had a pretty good idea of what his real problem was right now: he was tired, tired because he hadn’t been sleeping well, hadn’t been sleeping well because he hadn’t been drinking. It felt horrible to blame his crankiness on sobriety, but it was the most reasonable explanation.  
  
Before the three of them ran away from home, Annie had never spent a night of sleeping in Bertolt’s presence—there had been overnight stays and camping trips, sure, but those were always up-all-night-being-no-good-rascals affairs—and she’d been alarmed to discover what a fitful sleeper he was, thrashing and flailing and jolting awake. He did a bit better in Philly once their daily routines had been set, a hearty nightcap of vodka or whiskey being a regular part of his. But the still-shrouded disaster that befell Reiner’s friend, and a high suspicion that there was alcohol and possibly stronger drugs involved, had scared Bertolt into teetotalism. He’d been sober since Philly and his sleep had suffered miserably for it.  
  
Gazing across the table at him now, Annie could see the built up effects of it on his face, that sick, heavy-lidded expression and the dark waxiness around his eyes. There was also the ghostly purple shadow of a ripening bruise on one side of his nose, but that had nothing to do with sleeplessness. It did give her an idea, though.  
  
“I really am sorry if I hurt your feelings, Bertolt,” she said in her gentlest, most apologetic voice. “Just like I am sorry I hurt your nose. At least I’ve got aspirin back in the motel room that I can give you for that. Even if it doesn’t hurt too much now, aspirin will help prevent swelling.” Maybe that was true—Annie didn’t know, she just said it to get him to take the pill—but it didn’t even matter because what she planned to give him wasn’t aspirin. It wasn’t back in the motel room, either, but in the Altoids tin in her purse. Not something she felt she should administer in a pancake shack, though—better to wait until he was someplace safe, with a bed.  
  
Eld the waiter came back with their drinks, orange juice for Bertolt and for Annie an aesthetic concoction gradated with all the colors of a sunset, gold to rose, served up in a champagne flute. “That’s peach nectar with mango and guava,” Eld said as he presented it with a flourish of his hand. “It’s not even on the menu, made it especially for you, Miss Wallace.”  
  
“It looks divine,” she said and leaned in to take a long drag on the straw (because it never hurt for a target to see your lips in action). The drink was far too sweet for her tastes, but she hummed out a sultry, “Mmmm,” anyways.  
  
“Glad you like it,” said Eld, glowing with pride. “So have you folks decided what you’d like to eat or do you need some more time?”  
  
Annie hadn’t even looked at the menu, but seeing how successfully charmed their waiter had been when she let him pick her drink, she decided to keep it up and see how far the tactic got her. “Bring me the most bacon-filled dish you make, please. With extra bacon.” She said it very coyly, a skill she’d mastered through repeated application.  
  
“Ah, a woman after my own heart,” said Eld, pressing one hand to his chest before jotting down the order on his notepad. “And for the gentleman?”  
  
“I’ll have pancakes,” Bertolt said, sounding glum.  
  
Suddenly feeling a bit of sympathy for him—and for their waiter, having to deal with him—Annie spoke up again. “Please forgive him, he’s terribly shy. He grew up in Europe, you see, and he’s feeling homesick. Today is his birthday and he wishes he were spending it in Amsterdam with his friends instead of with his boring cousin here in the States.”  
  
“Oh, well Happy Birthday,” Eld said, shifting to a slower and more deliberate (but still very cheery) tone as he now assumed he was talking to someone with limited English. “Sorry you miss your friends, Utgard. But hey, I’ll make sure your pancakes are extra special, okay? And look on the bright side: your cousin here seems super sweet. Sit tight and I’ll be right back with that.”  
  
When Eld left, Bertolt’s expression changed from gloom to bewilderment as he stared across the booth at Annie.  
  
“What?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “You were being a grump so I made up a reason why. I told you, it’s just for fun.”  
  
He continued to goggle at her, mouth hanging open as he searched his brain for the words he’d apparently misplaced. Finally he said, “I’ve never seen this side of you, Annie. Not just the casual, _weird_ lies, but the way you were talking to the waiter. And the way you were looking at him.”  
  
The tone he used, like a shocked moral guardian, made her behavior sound scandalous, which it wasn’t. “It was just a little harmless flirting,” Annie said defensively.  
  
“I know, but—” Bertolt’s voice fizzled out as he had no argument to oppose her. A touch softer he added, “It’s just such a bizarre thing to witness is all. It’s like you’re acting in a play or something. It doesn’t seem like the real you at all.”  
  
“Well it is me,” Annie said, perhaps a bit too tartly. Pausing to think about it, though, she realize that this was the first time Bertolt had seen her in flirtation mode, since she’d only demonstrated it in private with her targets in Philadelphia and had eschewed the hobby altogether since they’d been on the road. And it really was a separate mode—different frame of mind, different code of behavior, she even used a different  voice—so, in that sense, it wasn’t her. This was her hidden talent: she could turn into a maneater.  
  
Bertolt hunched lower in his seat. His posture tended to serve as a loose indicator of his mood—the worse he felt, the smaller he tried to make himself, though being six-foot-four he could only shrink so much. “So is this what you were doing in Philly? How you got all those—”  
  
“How I got all those men?” she snapped at him before he could finish his question. His tone wasn’t judgmental, but the question itself inherently was. Intentional or not, Annie would not tolerate being slut-shamed.  
  
“I was going to say dates,” said Bertolt, raising his head back up a few inches. He sounded frustrated and, inexplicably, a little bit angry at her—unfair when she was only defending herself. “Is flirting like that how you got all those dates? And I only ask because I’m having some trouble wrapping my brain around it. In high school you showed no interest in dating whatsoever. You turned down every single guy who asked you out. And there were a lot, Annie—you _know_ you were _very_ desired. And now you act like a totally different person just to hook up with guys? Now you actively seek out what you so pointedly avoided? I don’t get it, Annie. I just don’t get it.”  
  
“Well, Bertolt, I wouldn’t expect a virgin like you to get it,” she said, face coolly composed even as her insides flared up with instant remorse. That really was cruel of her (not to mention immature) and she felt even worse about it when she saw Bertolt slump down as low as he could go.  
  
“Sorry I asked, Sheena,” he said, the use of her false name alerting her to the fact that Eld had returned with their dinner.  
  
They thanked the waiter for the food, but the exchange with Bertolt had sapped Annie of her enthusiasm to continue flirting. He’d brought up how she’d had many partners and she’d brought up how he’d had none. It was an equal exchange, tit for tat, which should have left them both feeling smugly gratified, but Annie got the impression that they both kind of felt like shit now.  
  
For a while the only sounds were the clinks of metal forks and knives against ceramic plates over a backdrop of heavily-synthesized 1980s pop-rock playing on the radio.  
  
 _Well isn't love primitive?_  
 _A wild gift that you wanna give;_  
 _Break out of captivity;_  
 _And follow me a stereo jungle child;_  
 _Love is the kill, your heart's still wild._  
  
The bacon and egg filled crepe that Eld had brought her, though perfectly made, was—and she would never admit this out loud to anyone—a bit too heavy on the bacon. Bertolt’s extra-special birthday pancakes looked more appetizing: golden brown and studded through with rainbow sprinkles, topped with a great swirly mound of whipped cream. What a waste that he was just picking at them, sawing off little bites with the side of his fork and chewing them slowly.  
  
He paused and let out a sigh. “I know you want to trade so just say it.”  
  
“Can we?” she asked.  
  
Without saying a word, he lifted their two plates and switched them. Then he resumed eating her stuffed crepe in his same meticulous manner.  
  
She cut herself a thick wedge from the pancake stack—there were six, with alternating layers of strawberry and blueberry syrup between them—and before forking it into her mouth said, “Thanks, Bertl.”  
  
In response, he mumbled something only half-coherent. “Yeah, well, it’s you, so, you know.”  
  
Neither said a word after that for the rest of dinner. They both devoured their respective meals, leaving not one smear of syrup or morsel of bacon behind as evidence of what they’d eaten. Annie did wonder, though, if Bertolt had only cleaned his plate so she wouldn’t feel guilty for making him trade—that was just the sort of thing he would do. Or maybe it was for their waiter’s sake, so that when he returned he would think he’d done so well in pleasing them.  
  
When Eld came back, he did indeed look happy to see two empty plates—and an empty champagne flute, too, since Bertolt had gone ahead and drained the tropical slurry for her. “I’m so glad to see you enjoyed everything. Hope this made your birthday a little bit brighter, Utgard. So, will there be anything else or just the bill?”  
  
“Just the bill, thanks,” Bertolt said.  
  
“Sure thing,” said Eld. Then he turned to address Annie separately. “Hey Sheena, I was wondering, if you don’t have any more plans with your cousin, would you maybe like to get a drink with me after my shift ends?” He made the request confidently and without awkwardness, which Annie always found attractive in a man.  
  
“Oh,” she said. The invitation was unexpected after she’d given up her efforts to flirt with him. Her eyes darted to Bertolt—looking away, _all_ awkwardness—for just a moment before she answered in her affected, girlish voice. “That sounds like fun. No, I don’t have plans.”  
  
He beamed charmingly at her. “Cool. There’s a bar right next door.” He gestured with an arm towards one wall, the bar presumably on the other side. “Meet me there at six-thirty?”  
  
“I’ll see you there,” she said.  
  
After paying the bill, Annie walked back to the motel with Bertolt loping ahead of her on his long legs—she could tell he was deliberately avoiding walking next to her. The storm clouds still looked far away, but they’d accumulated more lumpen violet bulk over dinner—whatever was coming was big and slow. Annie just hoped it would hold off until after her date. Or maybe Eld would give her a ride. Maybe back to his place.  
  
They got back to their motel room and Bertolt sprawled out on the bed, just like he had when they’d first arrived. After a few seconds of staring at the ceiling, languishing silently, he asked, “Do you like him?”  
  
Annie was rummaging through her backpack for another outfit but looked up at him when she heard the question. “What?”  
  
“That waiter guy, Eld. Do you like him?”  
  
What a stupid thing to ask. “I wouldn’t be getting a drink with him if I didn’t,” she said, though maybe “like” wasn’t really the best word for what she thought of Eld. He was physically attractive and she got the impression that she could get what she wanted from him without much effort, but she wasn’t going to tell Bertolt that she considered him easy prey.  
  
“Did you like all of them?” he asked.  
  
“You mean all the guys I’ve dated? Well sure, when I was with them I did.” The direction of his questioning made her uneasy so she tried to give short, breezy answers in the hope that he’d lose interest when he realized he wasn’t mining anything profound from her.  
  
“Is it ever hard to cut them out of your life? I mean, do you ever miss any of them.”  
  
“Not really. No. I like them, but I never get attached. That’s my rule.” She was sitting on the edge of her bed now, watching Bertolt as he lay on his, in jeans and a white t-shirt, one arm draped over his eyes. “Is there a purpose behind this interrogation?” she asked, mildly annoyed.  
  
“I guess not,” he said with a sigh. “I’m just trying to understand you better. Your thing with the flirting and all the boyfriends. But you’re right, someone like me probably can’t get it.”  
  
That wasn’t actually what she’d said. And, wait, was this him admitting that he’s a virgin? Annie already knew that much was true, of course, because, come on, it was Bertolt. Who would he have had sex with? When? Besides, she would have known it if he’d gotten any. She would have seen it on his face like she’d seen it on Reiner’s after he’d been out with that “friend” of his. But most guys would at least try to lie about it.  
  
“There’s really not all that much to get,” she confessed. Okay, she would offer him a little glimpse inside her head in return for his honesty, and also to make up for the fact that she was about to abandon him for the evening. “It’s fun and it feels good. Though to be honest the sex isn’t really the fun part. It’s the hunt that’s fun, the game of it. Sex is just how you know you’ve won. In a way it’s sort of like fighting—each new opponent presents a unique challenge to overcome. You hone your skills, learn how to counter your opponent’s moves, conquer him, and move on. It’s that simple.”  
  
At this point Bertolt lifted his arm from his face, propped himself up on his elbows and turned to look at her. “That doesn’t sound very romantic.”  
  
“That’s sort of the point,” she said. “Romance isn’t something that interests me. Romance is attachment and I don’t have any room in my life for attachments. Sex without attachment is, well, it’s ideal because you get all of the pleasure without any of the pain.” Wow, for a supposedly little glimpse she sure was revealing a lot. She hadn’t intended to—the words just flew from her mouth like doves from an opened cage, living things with a will to be freed. Almost like she _wanted_ to talk to somebody about it.  
  
Bertolt pushed himself up to a sit. He was quiet for a minute, his expression gone blank—Annie couldn’t fathom what was going on in his brain. Then his brow knitted and his lips pursed, and with an odd delicacy he asked, “You are careful, though, right?”  
  
Annie made a dismissive little snort, verging on a laugh—his body language had her anticipating something far more dreadful than this. “You mean condoms?” she said. “Is this the condom talk? Because Reiner already had this talk with me. And even if he hadn’t, the subject matter falls squarely in the realm of uncomfortable brother lectures, and you, Bertolt, are not my brother.”  
  
At this, to Annie’s surprise and strange delight, Bertolt’s mouth quirked up into a tiny smile. “No, I’m your Dutch cousin, Utgard, remember?” Well at least in retrospect he could see the humor in it.  
  
“Europeans are sexy,” she said. “You should consider it a compliment.”  
  
Cheeks pinking, he averted his eyes to his lap and continued. “I didn’t mean condoms. I meant, you know, your feelings. You don’t ever let them talk down to you or be rude to you or take advantage of you, do you?”  
  
“Reiner already had the self-respect talk with me, too,” Annie said and clucked her tongue. “Really, Bertolt, do you honestly think I would ever let some guy make me feel bad? You know me better than that. And just for the record, I am always careful in _every_ sense: condoms, feelings, and everything else. You don’t need to worry about me.”  
  
“I know, but I can’t help it,” he said. “I—” Short pause, his eyes still avoiding hers, then, in a quick burst, “I’m sorry, Annie. I have no business butting into your personal life.”  
  
“You’re right, Bertolt, you don’t.” It had the right syntax to be a snappy comeback but lacked the haughty indignation to carry it because she wasn’t actually mad at him.  
  
Another pause, this one long. Annie looked up at the popcorn ceiling, at the halo stains from water damage like the outlines of jellyfish overlapping one another. That explained the mildew smell. Was this roof going to leak when the storm got here?  
  
“Should we talk about Reiner?”  
  
The question brought her back down. She looked at Bertolt, who was looking at her now, eyes dark green and uncertain. “What do you mean?” she asked. There was so much they could potentially talk about in regard to Reiner—things that had gone unsaid for the past seven months: that last night in Philly and his psychological stability; or for longer: his sexuality and his feelings for Bertolt, though Annie didn’t know how much Bertolt knew about either of those topics.  
  
“About what happened in Philadelphia,” Bertolt said. “The incident with his friend. Whatever happened at that party—well, he hasn’t shared much about it with me and I haven’t been pressing him to talk about it, but I can’t help feeling like it affected him more than he wants us to know. You know how Reiner is, always putting up a brave front and trying to act strong. But that first night after it happened, when he cried in our arms—I’ve never seen him cry like that before. Have you?”  
  
“No,” said Annie. She didn’t know how else to respond. That night had felt so heavy and historical while it was unfolding—a couple of World War II field medics attending to the inconsolable, shell-shocked lone survivor of a firebombing. But after replaying it so many times in her head it had become a mere movie of the War, and a damaged one at that, soundless and faded and sepia-toned. The one thing she remained certain of was that Reiner had bared his emotions that night in a way he never had before or since.  
  
Bertolt hugged his knees up to his chest in the familiar, protective pose of his youth. “I thought—I _hoped_ —that he would open up and talk to me, but the next day he just bottled it all up again. He was acting like his usual self again. Only, not exactly. It’s like if you take all the peanut butter out of a new jar and then try to put it back. You can get it all—or, well, most of it—back in, but it’s not going to be the same as it was before. You know?”  
  
It was an odd metaphor—and Bertolt had made it with utter seriousness!—but she did understand. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”  
  
“I don’t suppose he said anything to you about it?” Bertolt asked. “You being his sister and all.”  
  
She felt compelled to just give the shortest answer: "no," because Reiner hadn’t told her anything, and because she was supposed to leave for a date in about thirty minutes. But while she didn’t have any insights directly from Reiner, she did know more about what had happened to his friend than she had shared with Bertolt. Should she tell him what she’d discovered on her own? Was it her place to say? And how much did Bertolt already know?  
  
“He didn’t talk to me about it either,” she admitted. “But I—Look, there are things about Reiner that he hasn’t told me but that I know anyways because he’s my brother.”  
  
“I figured you did,” Bertolt said. “So I guess you know that he’s gay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Annie said. Ah, so Bertolt _did_ know. But of course he knew; he was the best friend and the quiet observer, naive about some matters, but not about this. Then again, she was quite certain he had no idea Reiner was in love with him. Some people were just oblivious when it came to love. “Did he tell you, or did you figure it out on your own?” she asked.  
   
“He didn’t tell me,” Bertolt answered. “I just sort of felt it. I’m not going to call it a psychic connection or any of that hoodoo you hate—especially since, looking at it objectively, there _were_ signs, like how he was never all that interested in the girls at school—but I sensed it. I think I first knew it when we were about twelve.”  
  
“Really?” Annie said, eyebrows lifting. “I didn’t know until he was fifteen, right around when—” She didn’t finish the sentence and say “Dad died,” but Bertolt would know what she meant. She wouldn’t tell him how she figured it out, though, about that gentle caress that Reiner had bestowed upon his sleeping head when he was passed out on their couch.  
  
Thankfully, Bertolt skipped that question and instead asked, “Do you think his friend might have been, you know, a boyfriend?” There was sensitivity in the way he asked it, an earnest longing to understand.  
  
Well now Annie would have to share what she knew. She pick up her backpack and sifted through the loose contents, finding what she wanted at the very bottom. It was a clipping from a newspaper, folded in half, softened to pulpiness from the crush of other objects over time. “I saved this,” she said, handing it to Bertolt.  
  
He lowered his feet to the floor, leaned forward, and took the paper. With the carefulness of a surgeon, he unfolded the fragile newsprint. His eyes moved back and forth, reading quickly. Having already read the article over a dozen times herself, Annie already knew by heart what he was just now absorbing.

_Last night, Marcel B. Vogel (23), a graduate student at Drexel University, was found dead of a skull fracture after leaping from a balcony at the popular gay night club, Blue Moon. Autopsy reports found high levels of MDMA, also known by the names “ecstasy” and “Molly” in his system. Eyewitnesses saw Vogel entering the club with a tall, blond young man, but this individual has not been identified and authorities have not been able to locate him for questioning. The club’s owner commented, saying that he is deeply saddened by the turn of events and that he is considering new measures to crack down on drug use in his establishment. “This tragedy has shed a fresh light on the ongoing problem of recreational drug use within the gay community that I am part of and I would be remiss if I stood by and did nothing.”_

The article went on to talk about current trends of drug use in gay clubs, but that one paragraph, along with the date and the grainy black and white photo of Marcel B. Vogel, provided the essential information. Had Bertolt ever seen him at Warehouse 104 fight nights? Because Annie had. She’d seen him standing next to Reiner as they watched the fights together, the two of them whispering back and forth to each other, laughing at who knows what.  
  
“You think this Vogel guy was Reiner’s boyfriend?” Bertolt asked, still gripping the edges of the article as if it were a delicate scientific specimen.  
  
“I think he might have been,” Annie said. Actually, she was quite certain. “I mean, it would explain a lot. Why Reiner hadn’t introduced us to him yet. Why we had to leave Philly so quickly.”  
  
Bertolt tilted back his head to look at the ceiling, wistful as a poet, and was silent for several seconds before he said, “I wish he would have told me. I always figured that the reason he never just went ahead and told me he was gay was because he knew that I already knew and that he didn’t have to say anything. But to find out he was seeing somebody and didn’t feel he could tell me, I don’t know what to make of it. It’s like he’s slipping away from me.”  
  
When he brought his eyes back down to meet hers, Annie could see that they were wet from the way the lamplight reflected in them. He was barely holding back his tears, almost crying over how much he cared about her brother, and it struck Annie as one of the sweetest things she’d ever seen. Bertolt’s affection and concern for Reiner endeared him to her in a way that she couldn’t even explain.  
  
There was a distant purr of thunder.  
  
Annie stood up, took the few steps required to cross the space between the beds and sat down next to him, hip to hip. “I don’t think Reiner is slipping away from you,” she said. “I think he just needs to work a few things out on his own first. You’ve always been there for him, Bertolt. You’re the most constant presence in his life. And someday he will come to you and he will tell you everything.”  
  
“Everything?” there was a hint of inquiry in his voice, like he suspected that she knew other things he didn’t and was challenging her to share them.  
  
“Everything,” she affirmed and said no more. Giving him that article was one thing, but she had no rights to tell him that her brother was in love with him, especially when she didn’t truly know the depths of Reiner’s feelings.  
  
Annie wondered if Reiner actually would ever tell Bertolt how he felt, and if she were being brutally honest with herself, she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to. What were the possible outcomes? The most likely was that Bertolt would be forced to break Reiner’s heart by telling him that he loved him but not in _that way_. At least Annie didn’t think that Bertolt loved him that way. Bertolt liked girls—a mutually embarrassing, accidental viewing of his uncleared browser history had confirmed that much—but he was too self-conscious and introverted to ever ask a girl out and rarely even talked to any besides Annie. Maybe it wouldn’t even matter that Reiner was male. Maybe emotional ties would overpower biological urges. And that would be the other possible outcome: Reiner and Bertolt would fall madly in love, become a couple (a fused entity that Annie’s imagination dubbed “ReiBert”), and she would become the third wheel. As awful as the first scenario would be, Annie was more afraid of the second. Reiner and Bertolt were the only exceptions to her no attachments rule; if they didn’t need her, she would truly be alone.  
  
Ah, but now was not the right time to worry about that. For now, or at least for the next few minutes, she could just relax into the comfortable silence Bertolt offered. It was a cherished moment of quiet peace, but then it changed to something rarer and more wonderful: for the first time since the day of Dad’s funeral, Bertolt began to sing.  
  
 _“I've heard there was a secret chord;_  
 _That David played, and it pleased the Lord;_  
 _But you don't really care for music, do you?_  
 _It goes like this;_  
 _The fourth, the fifth;_  
 _The minor fall, the major lift;_  
 _The baffled king composing Hallelujah.”_  
  
Annie closed her eyes and tilted her head to rest against his shoulder as she listened. His voice was still as rich and sweet as she remembered.  
  
 _“Hallelujah, Hallelujah;_  
 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah.”_  
  
“Okay Bertl, knock it off,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “I still have to take a shower before my date and you’re making me not want to leave.” She stood up and took one step before his hand wrapped around her wrist and stopped her.  
  
“Stay,” he said. She twisted around to look at him and his grip immediately released. “S-sorry, Annie. I just—I think you should stay here.”  
  
“I told him I’d be there,” she said. “Besides, what is there to do in this crappy motel room?”  
  
“We could watch TV.” Bertolt stood up and grabbed the remote control from the nightstand between the two beds and aimed it at the television set, which blinked on with a crackle of static. The display was a glaring, PC-error-screen blue. He pumped the buttons with his thumb but every channel was exactly the same.  
  
“Some color TV,” Annie said wryly.  
  
“To be fair, blue is a color,” Bertolt said as he turned off the television. “Okay, so watching TV is out. We could talk.”  
  
“About—?”  
  
“Old times. Pleasant memories. Fond reminiscence. That sort of thing.”  
  
Annie closed her eyes and heaved a sigh. “I don’t want to talk about the good old days, Bertl. Not when Reiner isn’t with us. And even if he were, I don’t see what good it does to retread the same old roads, even the happy ones. You can’t change the past and you can’t get back the things you’ve lost.”  
  
“But—” His eyes were shining, lonely but hopeful; they were the eyes of the seven-year old boy who had jumped over to her balcony just to have friends. “Okay, we can talk about the future instead. What is your greatest dream for the future, Annie?”  
  
She met his eagerness with incredulity, releasing a single sardonic laugh. “Ha! Dream for the future? How can I possibly envision the future? We don’t even know where we will be at this time tomorrow.”  
  
“I mean long-run,” he said, a bit more timid. “Once we have a permanent home. What do you want to be?”  
  
“Nothing,” she said, spitting out the word like an apple pip. She was growing annoyed with him again. “Why, what do _you_ want to be?”  
  
Blinking, stunned by her sudden ire, he said, “Happy. I just want to become happy.” He paused for a moment. “You really don’t want to be anything?”  
  
“No, I don’t,” she said, her voice barbed. “I don’t want to do anything or be anything.” A look of guilt darkened his face and it occurred to her that he was probably thinking about how he’d ruined her future. “Look,” she said. “It’s got nothing to do with you setting us on this path. Even before—” She paused because none of them ever mentioned the horrible incident directly. “Even before we hit the road, I didn’t have any dreams or goals, so it’s not like it’s your fault. Heh. It’s funny, when my Mom was this age, she wanted to do everything. She wrote about it in her journal: doctor, lawyer, mother—the works. And here I am, her daughter, and I don’t want to do anything.” She could hear an unintended touch of despair in her own voice. “I haven’t wanted anything since—”  
  
“Since your Dad died,” he said, quiet and knowing.  
  
Prickling heat climbed up Annie’s neck like forest fire up a tree. She felt exposed by the words, even though she’d plainly implied the conclusion he provided. “Like I said, you can’t get back the things you’ve lost. Anything you care about or become attached to, be it people or things or dreams, can be taken away in an instant so—”  
  
“So that’s why your rule is no attachments,” Bertolt said, cutting in before she could say the the words she hadn’t even thought of yet.  
  
The fire was up to her face now, scorching her raw. “It’s an effective policy. It works for me. Now, if you don’t mind, I really need to take a shower, Bertolt.” She turned her back to him, ready to march to the bathroom and not look back, afraid he would see how very close to discomposed he’d made her.  
  
“Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry I bugged you, Annie. Can I just ask one more question?”  
  
“What?” she said, standing motionless but refusing to turn around.  
  
“Does it make you happy?”  
  
That did it.  
  
She spun and rounded on him with eyes full of fury. Of all the things he’d asked her this evening, this was by far the most inappropriate, the most intrusive. “What business is it of yours? And what do you even know about happiness anyway? To you, happiness is some nebulous future state that you are always wishing for, always hoping to find in a book or at the bottom of a glass. But has it paid off, Bertolt? Would you say you are happy, Bertolt?” During her retaliation, she had closed the space between them so now she was right in front of him, glowering upwards, one index finger jabbing aggressively into his chest.  
  
“I’m trying,” Bertolt said in a strained voice. His forehead was beaded with sweat.  
  
“And that’s the difference between you and me, Bertolt. While you’re sitting around, lost in your books and waiting on the illusion you call happiness, I’m experiencing pleasure in the moment, which may be fleeting, but at least it’s real.”  
  
It took about two seconds for the shock on Bertolt’s face to resolve into an icy bitterness. “Fine, Annie. Have your pleasure. You are clearly much more enlightened than I am so enjoy fucking the waiter from the pancake shack. But before you go, you better give me that aspirin you promised because I feel a great big headache coming on.”  
  
Another rumble of thunder.  
  
“With pleasure,” she said smugly and went to retrieve her purse.  
  
In the muddle of their post-dinner conversation, she’d forgotten all about her plan to drug him and it relieved her to think of it now. In her Altoids tin, along with the usual assortment of Tylenols and Midols and Pepto-Bismols, were five tablets of Dilaudid, which she’d gotten from a pharmacy tech she dated for less than a week in Philadelphia. Not having a high tolerance for the stronger opioids herself—Percocet was about as potent as she could take without puking—she’d saved them for an emergency such as this. One pill should be enough to give Bertolt easy sleep, she figured.  
  
She lifted the lid of the tin and took out one of the tiny, blue-white pills—the smallest dosage in her arsenal and yet the most potent. “Here you go,” she said, placing it on the palm of Bertolt’s hand.  
  
“Uh, is that going to be enough?” he asked doubtfully.  
  
“It will be enough, trust me.” Ten times stronger than morphine, if she remembered correctly.  
  
She went to put the tin away and when she opened her purse she noticed light leaking in from a place it shouldn’t be—there was a tear in one side. When did that get there? Quickly, she retook inventory: Wallet? Got it. Zippered bag? Right here. Pocket knife? Yep. Her pill tin was there, of course. So that just left— “Luna!” She upended the purse, dumping its contents onto the bed. No Luna, but, for the first time she saw the tag that said _Made in China_ and she growled furiously. “Designer my ass! Fuck you, Todd or Ted! Or Tad!”  
  
“Is something wrong?” Bertolt asked.  
  
“I lost Luna.” Her hands were shaking as the horror of the situation rose up like floodwater to close over her head. Luna was gone. Her last remnant of Dad. Gone. But she’d seen Luna before they left for dinner so she must be nearby. “I have to go find her.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“She was in my purse,” Annie said, keeping her voice remarkably steady considering her level of inner panic. “She must have fallen out somewhere between here and the pancake place. I have to find her before the storm gets here and washes her away.”  
  
With impeccable timing, a roar of thunder shook the room and was immediately followed by a sound like a bed sheet ripping in half as the sky erupted in a sudden downpour.  
  
Annie’s heart plummeted. She hurried to the window and pulled up the shade; the rain was falling so heavily she couldn’t even see the highway. “No, no, no, no,” she said in a squeaky whisper.  
  
“Annie, you can’t go out in that,” Bertolt said.  
  
He was right, of course; even though every cell in her body wanted to run out into the deluge like a madwoman and fish through the mud for her little lost wolf, she had to restrain herself. She couldn’t get hysterical over a stuffed animal, not after she’d made such a big deal of her no attachments policy. And besides, the way it was coming down, Luna was probably already gone, carried away on a torrent to some far off storm drain.  
  
Her eyelids stung. Shit, she was going to cry.  
  
“I’m going to take my shower,” she said, holding in her tears and controlling her voice only through prodigious effort. She walked to the bathroom placing each step with care, as if setting her foot down on the wrong spot of carpet would cause her facade to shatter like glass.  
  
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Bertolt asked, but she didn’t answer him and she didn’t look back.  
  
Locked inside the bathroom, waiting for the shower to get hot, she sat on top of the toilet seat and drew in deep, shaking breaths. She felt like a part of her had been cut out, excised like tonsils or appendix, never to grow back. It was stupid—so ridiculously stupid that she almost burst out in crazed laughter. She was on the verge of a mental breakdown over a fucking toy.  
  
When billows of steam filled up the small room, indicating that the water was running hot, Annie shed her clothes and stepped inside. She had to get a grip on herself; there was no way she could charm her way into that handsome waiter’s bed while she was a quivering nervous wreck. If the rain let up before it was time to leave, she could keep her eyes out for Luna on her way to the bar. And hey, maybe Luna had escaped at the restaurant and was waiting patiently in their lost and found box. Or maybe Eld would show up for their date with Luna in his hand and say something like, _“I noticed you left this behind at your table today.”_  
  
Annie cringed at that scenario, not because it was embarrassing to have her sex life tainted by Luna, but because she didn’t want Luna tainted by her sex life. Only the privileged few would ever understand how special that wolf was, certainly not one of her use-em-and-lose-em targets.  
  
It wasn’t until she turned off the shower and stepped out that she realized she’d forgotten to bring in her change of clothes. There were towels on the rack and she wrapped one around her body like a sarong. With any luck, Bertolt would have already popped his pill and be sufficiently drowsy to pay her no heed. Though it probably didn’t even matter; they’d been living together so closely for so long, the sight of her in a towel could hardly be considered shocking. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, she left the bathroom.  
  
Rain was still pummeling the roof relentlessly, the sound punctuated by frequent, rolling peals of thunder.  
  
“I’m in a towel, please don’t stare,” she said before she realized she was speaking to an empty room. “Bertl, where are you? Don’t you dare jump out and scare me when I’m wearing a towel.” Surprising her like that would definitely be out of character for him, but if he thought it would cheer her up he just might do it.  
  
On the nightstand was the tiny pill he hadn’t taken—wherever he was, at least he wasn’t doped up. But where was he?  
  
The _whoosh_ of the door opening and the crescendo of storm noise made her start. There he was, framed in the doorway, soaked from head to toe and dripping. A flash of lightning threw his tall, slender form into silhouette for a split-second before he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.  
  
“Oh good, you haven’t left yet,” he said, panting between words. His wet bangs stuck to his forehead (Annie hadn’t realized how long his hair had gotten), and his wet shirt stuck to his torso (she hadn’t realized how thin he’d gotten either). In one hand he clutched a red umbrella, the kind with the candy cane handle. “I got this for you, Annie. To get to the bar for your date. Consider it an apology. And, uh, I also found this for you.” He held out his other hand, which held a sodden brown lump.  
  
“Luna,” Annie said breathlessly. She stepped closer and took the wet thing up in both her hands. “You found her. Where? How?”  
  
“I just retread the same road we took to the pancake shack. She was about halfway between here and there. Might have to rinse her out. I found her in a puddle next to the highway.”  
  
He would have had to run, constantly scanning the ground, in super-low visibility, to find her and be back already. Unbelievable. So that’s why he was panting.  
  
“Why?” she asked, staring at him.  
  
Bertolt smiled at her, tinged with melancholy like always. “It’s Luna. You need her.”  
  
Yes, she did need Luna. And Bertolt knew it. He knew it without her having to say it. He knew it even though it went against the vitriolic rant she’d dropped on his head just minutes ago. He knew it because he knew her.  
  
Annie wanted him. Suddenly and badly. Not for the thrill of the hunt or for the triumph of sexual conquest, but simply because he was Bertolt.  
  
Setting Luna on her bed, she moved in close to him, wordlessly grabbed a fistful of his wet t-shirt, and pulled him down into a kiss. He tasted like rain. A shocked noise formed in his throat but quickly transformed into a hum of pleasure, vibrating ticklishly from his lips to hers. His hands swooped behind her head and hovered tentatively at the nape of her neck, like he didn’t know exactly where to put them, and Annie realized that she would have to take the lead. Much to her surprise, the idea excited her: virginal Bertolt Hoover, hers to command and to teach.  
  
She pulled back, drinking air in small, quick sips. Bertolt’s hands settled on her shoulders, his touch still uncertain, and he looked down at her with confused elation.  
  
“Annie, you kissed me.” He spoke the words like he couldn’t believe he was saying them, let alone that the event they described had actually happened.  
  
“I did,” Annie whispered. “And now I am doing this.” Her fingers found the hem of his shirt and peeled it up and off over his head, rucking up his dark hair into a wild spray. The freshly exposed skin turned to gooseflesh as air conditioning hit damp and she chaffed her hands over his belly to warm him. Months of malnutrition had thinned him to the point where his ribs were visible beneath the skin, like a saint from a medieval altarpiece, and she ran her fingers across all the ridges and valleys with fascination.  
  
“Sorry, I’ve gotten a little bit skinny,” he said softly, but Annie shushed him, pressing one finger to his lips.  
  
“It’s okay. You are no less of a man in my eyes.” She glided a hand over his cheek to cup the corner of his jaw. “And I do see you as a man, Bertolt. In case you still had doubts.”  
  
Bertolt’s response was to lean down and kiss her of his own volition, crushing his mouth against hers with such force that she gasped in surprise before sinking languorously into it. That's right, Bertolt always had been a fast learner.  
  
Annie knotted their hands together, both of hers holding both of his, and led him to the bed. Her heart raced in anticipation. Bertolt shivered and she hastened to get him out of his drenched jeans, her fingers clumsy as they undid the button and pulled down the zipper. The rain had shrunk the denim and it was reluctant to part from his legs, but Annie persisted, tugging down his pants until he could step out of them and kick them aside.  
  
She left his underwear in place for now, but those boxer-briefs were saturated, too, clinging to him like a second skin. Annie had seen him in yoga pants and in pants that he was on the verge of outgrowing—garments that revealed a faintly suggestive outline of his endowment—but his current state left very little to the imagination. Her immediate thought was of the cover of the Rolling Stones album, _Sticky Fingers_ , which she’d first come across while browsing her parents’ record collection. At fourteen, that image had been a launching point for her sexual awakening, and now she had a real life version right in front of her. She’d been with enough men to know that height was not really proportional to penis size, but Bertolt was a prime example of the sort of guy who must have inspired that myth in the first place. He was a tall, awkward virgin with a huge cock and no clue how to use it.  
  
“Get on the bed,” she husked, and he obeyed her without question, stretching out on his back, the height of him spanning the entire length of the bed. Annie climbed on, straddled his hips as she gazed down at him with an authoritative air. Deftly, her fingers unwrapped the bath towel from around her chest and let it fall from her body.  
  
Bertolt’s eyes widened, pupils dilating and shrinking the irises to thin green rings. “Annie,” he breathed. He reached his hand towards her face but she caught it before it touched her.  
  
“Just follow my lead.” She brought his hand to her lips, kissed the tips of his index and middle fingers and took them into her mouth. They were cold so she sucked them until they warmed, working her tongue between them and coating them generously with saliva. Then she guided his slicked fingers between her legs, positioning them over her sex, and whispered instructions. “That little bump right there—feel it?—that’s where you want to touch. Gently.”  
  
The first contact brought red to Bertolt’s cheeks but he swallowed and nodded and began to move his fingers, tracing the sensitive nub with slow, circling sweeps.  
  
Annie rewarded him with a soft moan from deep in her throat. “Yes, just like that.”  
  
He repeated the maneuver a couple of times and then began to experiment, attentive to her reaction as he stroked her delicate folds and spread her open, dipped his fingers inside her to gather moisture and brought them back to tease her clit again. She hummed and sighed and rocked into his touch; for a man with no experience, his instincts were amazing. His other hand, unable to remain idle, smoothed up her thigh, over the jut of her square hip and up her ribcage to palm her small, high breast and her breath caught when he rolled the nipple between thumb and forefinger.  
  
He was as perspicacious as she’d expected, discerning from the sounds she made and the twitches of her muscles when he did right and adjusting his technique when her response was lacking. His eagerness to please wedded perfectly with her informed desire and he followed her directions without hesitation. “There. Yes. Slower. A little bit higher. Oh god yes. Oh. _Oh_.”  
  
By now a telltale hardness was pressing insistently against her through a thin, damp layer of fabric; it was time for the underwear to go. She drew back and pulled the boxer-briefs down to his knees and Bertolt got them the rest of the way off using his feet. The sight of his naked body, long and slender, exposed and vulnerable beneath her, was inexplicably beautiful. She was naked, too, and she couldn't help thinking that this moment should have felt more awkward than it did.  
  
His cock was something to behold, not just because of its size—the word "colossal" came to mind—but because of its perfect shape and subtle upward curve. Most men would sell their own mothers to have a cock like his and Bertolt had no idea. It was already fully hard, the scarlet head pearled with pre-ejaculate, and Annie couldn’t resist running a fingertip along the raveling cord of vein on the underside, causing Bertolt to whimper helplessly. Good thing she’d had him bring her nearly to climax because she had a feeling he wouldn’t last long.  
  
She eased herself down onto him slowly, guiding his cock inside of her with one hand and reveling in the exquisite sensation of it pushing into her tight sheath, filling her completely. Once she was fully seated, still shifting her hips to accommodate such a large presence in her small body, her eyes fell on his face. His expression was exultant, like a dying man at the moment the pain stops and heaven appears. Was sex really so amazing for guys?  
  
“I can’t believe this is really happening,” he said in a breathy whisper. He bent at the waist, leaned up to kiss her mouth as his hands slid up to her shoulder blades, cradling her against him. Such a tender, grateful kiss.  
  
Then he lay back on the bed, holding her buttocks to steady her, and Annie began to move. She splayed her fingers on his gaunt chest as she rode his hips—slow, small bucks at first (because, despite her experience, it hurt) but evolving to a steady, rhythmic grinding as she found her pace. She could feel his gaze on her skin, warm and radiant as a sunbeam. He didn’t take his eyes off her.  
  
Sighs and moans—her sultry alto and his rich baritone—played over the susurrus of the ongoing storm, building to a fever pitch. Annie kept thinking she would careen over the top but instead climbed higher, higher, higher. When he touched his thumb to that spot between her legs with just the right amount of pressure, she at last reached the tipping point, all the tension inside of her uncoiling deliciously as she came. She crumpled against his chest just as she felt the quake of his orgasm beneath her, his arms wrapping around her body to hold her tightly as he muttered in delirium.  
  
“I love you, Annie. I love you. I love you. I love you.”  
  
Oh the things men said at the apogee of sex.  
  
They stayed joined for several seconds, panting and coming back to themselves, before Annie rolled off of him and settled against his side. He pulled her closer with one arm, nuzzled the top of her head sweetly, and she just lay there, awash in biochemical serenity, listening to his heartbeat and watching his chest rise and fall. His limp member lolled wetly against his thigh. There were streaks of blood on it, though Annie was no virgin—the sheer size of him had torn her fresh.  
  
And that was when the wrongness of the scene hit her.  
  
This was the point where she and her lover always parted ways, both of them satisfied with the transaction, never to cross paths again. But it was Bertolt. His path _was_ her path. All of the men she’d had sex with before had been disposable, but Bertolt was not. He was, and always would be, indispensable to her.  
  
He was also the person her brother loved. The realization struck her like a bullet: Reiner was in love with Bertolt and she'd just recklessly had sex with him. She hadn’t even considered Reiner’s feelings. Of course she hadn’t—why would she? She only ever thought about herself.  
  
Guilt stabbed her like a sword, a pain so sharp and real she bolted upright, holding her chest as if there were an actual puncture wound there, her heart bleeding out between her fingers.  
  
Bertolt blinked up at her dozily, still in a refractory torpor. “What’s wrong, Annie?” His words expressed concern but his face was as placid as a monk’s.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Couldn’t he see? Post-orgasm or not, he had to realize what a stupid mistake this was. “We just had sex, Bertolt, that’s what’s wrong?”  
  
He propped himself on elbows and, with a confused look said, “Oh,” his mouth making a small circle. “That was wrong?”  
  
She didn’t think he’d meant for it to be a question, but his voice had gone up on the last word, betraying his incomprehension. Calmly—or as calmly as she could—she said, “Yes, Bertolt, it was wrong. We—” She stopped and restarted to keep the blame where it belonged. “ _I_ shouldn’t have done that. I got caught up in the moment because you found Luna and it made me so happy.” She sighed; she really couldn’t explain why she’d wanted him so badly at that moment. “But that’s no excuse. I could just as easily blame it on the storm or being on the road too long. The truth is I acted impulsively and caused this huge mess.”  
  
“Mess?” He looked ashamed despite having just been absolved of any wrongdoing. “Was it really that bad? Was I—was I terrible?”  
  
His wounded expression was too much to bear and Annie had to look away. “It’s not that, Bertl. I promise you it’s not that.”  
  
“But you’re unhappy.”  
  
Annie pulled back from him, suddenly unable to ignore their nudity. Here was the awkwardness that had been missing during the act itself. “Unhappy isn’t the word for it.” She paused to find her discarded bath towel and hastily wrapped it back around her. “Friends shouldn’t fuck. It’s as simple as that. Sex makes friendships messy and complicated. The fact that we are even having this conversation is proof enough of that.”  
  
Oh why couldn’t she have just gone on her date and fucked Eld instead?  
  
“So you regret the sex because it messes up our friendship,” he said in a slow, measured way, like a cop reading back a witness’ statement for verification.  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Because you and I are friends.”  
  
“We’re more than friends,” Annie said. “We’re like family and we _need_ each other, which is why we absolutely can’t have the sort of messiness that sex brings.” In truth, that was less than half the reason, but it would have to be enough.  
  
Bertolt was sitting up now and had wriggled back into his boxer-briefs, even though they were probably still damp. “So, what do you want to do?” he asked.  
  
Annie looked in his eyes and felt his trust like a tangible thing, a steel tether between the two of them—whatever she said now, he was behind her, and that gave her strength. “We act like it never happened,” she said, the statement absolute. “We never speak of it to anybody, even to each other. We need to go so far in pretending it never happened that we even fool ourselves, got it?”  
  
He gave a small vigorous bob of his head and said, in an uncharacteristically croaky voice, “It never happened.”  
  
“It never happened,” Annie repeated firmly. “You especially cannot breath a word of it to Reiner.”  
  
“I wasn’t exactly getting myself worked up to tell my best friend I made—er—had sex with his little sister,” Bertolt said, chuckling nervously.  
  
It was almost precious the way he assumed that Reiner would be mad at _him_ for having sex with _her_. Dear, naive Bertolt.  
  
Of course, if Bertolt really was exclusively and immutably heterosexual, Reiner was going to get his heart broken eventually. But Annie couldn’t bear to be the woman who brought the pain. Bertolt’s first ought to have been some stranger that she and Reiner could despise together—since the thought of Bertolt having a girlfriend triggered an automatic, not entirely rational feeling of despising in Annie.  
  
“I’m serious,” she told him. “You can’t tell Reiner. And we can’t act any different around each other or he’ll know. Can you do that?”  
  
Smiling ruefully, he said, “I’m actually surprisingly good at pretending things didn’t happen.”  
  
A silence fell between them—there was no responding to that. All three of them were pretending.  
  
“I’m going to go clean up and get ready for bed,” Annie finally said, standing up and re-tucking her towel more neatly. “You should take the aspirin I gave you, Bertolt. Your nose is looking a bit purple.” A solid night’s sleep would do them both good.  
  
In the bathroom, Annie soaked a washcloth in the sink, wrung it out, and used it to mop up the slick of her blood and Bertolt’s semen still congealing on her thighs.  
  
 _It never happened_ , she thought to herself. _It never happened. It never happened. It never happened._  
  
She brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas: gym shorts and an old t-shirt of Reiner’s that said _Angel Altonen High Varsity Football_ on it. Good, it would remind her of her loyalty to her dear big brother. Hopefully—and if she believed there was any point to prayer she would have prayed on it—Bertolt would not crack. She wasn’t worried at all until she remembered how emotional Bertolt got over Reiner not sharing things with him. But she had to trust him.  
  
When she emerged from the bathroom, he was sitting on the edge of the bed in sweatpants and an undershirt, his toothbrush in his hand. “You all finished in there?”  
  
“Go ahead,” she said. She stole a glance at the nightstand and saw he’d taken the Dilaudid. Good. As Bertolt stood up and stepped past her towards the bathroom, she added, excessively, “It never happened.”  
  
Bertolt tilted his head and looked at her like she’d said something daft. “What are you talking about?”  
  
Mollified, she pulled down the ugly paisley bedcover and the sheet and crawled under, where she lay very still, hugging Luna’s soggy pelt to her chest and listening to the rain.  
  
 _It never happened._  
  
—  
  
Reiner arrived at ten in the morning, announcing himself outside the motel with the Toyota’s wheezy horn, and Annie and Bertolt went out to meet him in their rumpled clothes, backpacks slung on their shoulders. He’d slept better than usual—with no adverse effects from the Dilaudid, thank goodness—and she’d slept worse, her brain unable to settle down and stop worrying about how something would be different or off about them that Reiner would notice. But in the light of day, everything was the same as it ever was.  
  
“Good morning, sleepyheads,” Reiner greeted jovially, standing next to the car with a bag from McDonalds in one hand and a tray of drinks in the other. “I got breakfast.”  
  
“Thanks,” Annie mumbled drowsily. Reiner was the same as always.  
  
“Hotcakes?” Bertolt asked, sounding exactly like his usual self.  
  
“Of course,” said Reiner. Then his eyes flicked over Bertolt’s nose and he pursed his lips. “What happened there, Bertl, you poke Annie in her sleep or something?”  
  
Bertolt laughed weakly. “You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now.”  
  
Reiner’s laugh was hearty. “Yeah, she’s a vicious brute of a—” Noticing his sister’s frown, he changed the subject. “So, you kids ready to drive into the city and check out our new home?”  
  
This perked Annie up a bit. “Really? We have a place to stay? Is it with that friend of Armin’s?”  
  
They’d all climbed into their seats now and Reiner was distributing the food and drinks. “Yep,” he said, handing her an Egg McMuffin and a large cup of scalding hot coffee. “Marco Bott, really great guy. Apparently he and Armin went to the same middle school. Anyway, he’s a student at Washington University, lives in a nice apartment off-campus. He said we can crash at his place for a while until we save up some money.”  
  
Ah, and there it was, the same old problem they always faced: how to get legitimate work without any usable form of identification. “Not to put a damper on the good news,” said Annie, “but do we have any prospects in St. Louis for making money?”  
  
“Marco helped out with that, too,” Reiner said. “Called in some favors from friends—this guy is friends with the whole fucking city, I swear—and he got us jobs and fake IDs. They’re in the glove compartment, Bertl, if you want to check them out. And before you even ask, Annie, yours says you’re eighteen.”  
  
Bertolt opened the compartment and took out a small, yellow envelope, from which he pulled a stack of cards. “So I see you went with the same first names, but spelled differently,” he said, scrutinizing the card on top. “Mine’s got a h and a d in it. I take it that’s so we won’t have to learn to respond to something new. But, uh, why exactly did you make my last name Fubar?”  
  
“Because it sounds sort of like your actual name, but not quite,” said Reiner. “Mine is Brown and Annie’s is Leonard. Pretty ingenious, am I right?”  
  
“Er, I guess so, though now I will have to endure people joking about how I’m Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. Thanks, Reiner.” Bertolt sighed but followed it with a smile. “I suppose I’ve had worse fake names. Wouldn’t you agree, Sheena?”  
  
Reiner scrunched his nose. “Sheena?”  
  
“It’s an inside joke,” Bertolt said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”  
  
“Well, it’s about an hour to get to town, so you’ve got time to catch me up. Alright, is everybody buckled up? Good. Let’s get this show on the road.”  
  
—  
  
Marco Bott’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a tidy brick building on a city block lined by gingko trees. It was obvious from the attractively designed shopping arcades and manicured municipal gardens that this was a fairly affluent area—the kind of neighborhood where young upper-middle-class couples lived before they had kids and moved out to the suburbs—and Annie couldn’t help wondering how a college student could afford to live here.  
  
The trio took the elevator up, bringing only their essential items with them. All of them, even Reiner, looked road-weary and bedraggled, though it was only noon.  
  
“There is one more thing that I should probably tell you guys,” Reiner said as they made their way down the hallway. “Marco is just about the nicest guy you’ll ever meet, but his roommate is a little bit—” He grimaced and made a hand gesture that meant it was hard to express it in words.  
  
“So he’s an asshole,” Annie surmised out loud.  
  
Reiner pinched his fingers into the universal symbol for smallness. “Just a tiny bit of an asshole. Really, he’s not a bad guy. He’s just, well, he’s blunt. I can’t really say more than that because I only spent a couple of hours with him. I’ll let you form your own opinions. His parents pay the rent, though, so try to get along with him.”  
  
“Great,” Annie said with thick sarcasm.  
  
They’d reached the correct door. Annie was wary, but if Reiner had deemed this an acceptable place for them to stay, she would give it a chance. Right now she just wanted a place to sleep, or hibernate for the next six months.  
  
Reiner knocked on the door and it opened immediately, a narrow face with bright, foxy eyes appearing in the gap and not smiling at them. “Well, if it isn’t Marco’s strays,” the stranger said humorlessly. Then he let out a sigh and pulled the door all the way open. “Come on in.”  
  
They stepped inside one at a time, the young man who’d let them in inspecting them each in turn as they passed him and then closing the door behind them. So this was the semi-asshole roommate. He was thoroughly average in height and build, faintly horsey in the nose and cheekbones. His hair was light brown, thick on top and cropped shorter on the sides, and his clothes looked like they came from the Gap or Banana Republic or some similarly preppy store for the comfortable conformist. The most notable thing about him was the look of low-level disdain that appeared to be his default expression.  
  
“I’m Jean Kirstein,” he said. “That’s Jean, spelled like the pants but pronounced as in Jean Valjean. Do not call me _Gene_. Got it?”  
  
“Yeah, we got it,” Annie said flatly. She could sense that this guy was in the midst of a power trip and had no desire to feed it. “So is Marco around?” Her eyes scanned the apartment as she spoke: hardwood floors, shiny white kitchen, non-shitty furniture, several doors that might be bedrooms or bathrooms—Jean’s parents must be loaded.  
  
“He’s at work now but he’ll be home shortly,” said Jean. “Annie, right? You’re going to be working at the same place as him starting next week. It’s a coffee shop, hope you’re okay with that.” He said all of this very forcefully, as if he anticipated objections to every sentence and was prepared to fight them. Reiner’s vague warning was starting to make sense.  
  
“That’s fine,” said Annie. “I can make coffee.” Any idiot could make coffee.  
  
“And you,” Jean said, eyes turning to Bertolt who flinched. “You must be Bertolt. You’ll be working at a used book shop.”  
  
Bertolt’s face brightened. “Really?”  
  
Jean rolled his eyes. “Your buddy Reiner insisted on it.”  
  
Of course Reiner had. While his love could pass as platonic, it was not subtle or small. Her brother’s love was generous and expansive and Annie was envious—she didn’t know how to love anyone besides herself. But that was her protection, right? She was a rock, an island, just like the Simon and Garfunkel song.  
  
“And I’ve got a job on a construction site,” Reiner said proudly. “Mostly just heavy lifting, but that’s what I like.”  
  
The arrangements would be unbelievable if Reiner had really made them all by himself in the course of a day, but Annie strongly suspected some electronic communications had been going on between Armin and Marco well in advance of their arrival. It didn’t matter how it came about, though, as long as everyone was on the same page. The set-up was ideal, almost too good to be true.  
  
“Hey, you made it!” The front door had opened and a young man with dark hair and a broad, friendly face entered. “Welcome! Welcome to our apartment. Well, it’s your apartment, too, now. I’m Marco, by the way. I already met Reiner so that would make you two Annie and Bertolt. How do you do?”  
  
His bright demeanor was like a burst of sunshine and left Annie blinking. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you, Marco. Thanks for having us.”  
  
Between him and Jean, Marco was the cute one. His eyes were big and brown and puppyish, his cheeks smooth, spangled with cinnamon freckles. Most appealingly, he had a kind smile, which helped to balance out Jean’s stiff frankness.  
  
“I hope Jean treated you well,” he said with a chuckle. “He won’t say it, but he is pleased to have you here, too.”  
  
Jean, who had settled himself on a green corduroy sofa and turned on the television, sniffed and said, “As long as they follow the house rules.”  
  
“Right,” said Marco, trying to exude authority but just sounding like a pal. “House rules—We don’t have a lot, but here they are: Clean up after yourself. Contribute food and help with cooking when you can. No illegal stuff, though I don’t think that will be a problem. And, uh, just respect everyone else in the apartment. Let’s all get along, okay?”  
  
“I can live by those rules,” said Bertolt.  
  
“Sounds fine,” Annie agreed.  
  
Marco beamed. “Great! Let’s see, for sleeping there’s one extra bedroom and the sofa is a convertible. I’ll let you three hash it out amongst yourselves. And I guess that’s it. You know, I think this is going to be a lot of fun.”  
  
—  
  
Life in St. Louis with Marco and Jean began and a rhythm came more easily than Annie expected, largely due to Marco’s boosterish attitude. When Annie told him she missed practicing martial arts, he helped her get a membership at an area dojo. When she asked him where the best places to run were, he drew her a map and loaned her his iPod, since hers had long been broken. And he proved himself invaluable when it came to her job at the coffee shop—any idiot could make coffee, but memorizing the recipes for over fifty unique beverages on the regular menu at Brew Ha Ha would have taken her a month without Marco’s handy flash cards.  
  
She liked Marco for the simple and obvious reason that he was likable. She liked Jean too, or rather, she didn’t _dis_ like him. True, his personality was abrasive at times, but he was the type who treated others the way they treated him, so as long as Annie didn’t bother him, he didn’t bother her. As a pair, they were undemanding to live with; the one thing Annie couldn’t figure out was the exact nature of the relationship between the two of them. Sometimes they acted so much like a couple—Jean grousing and Marco placating—that it was hard to imagine they were just friends. But then she’d catch Jean looking at Japanese pin-up girls online and he’d snap his laptop closed and glare at her (“Do you _mind_?”) and she would retreat into uncertainty once again.  
  
She didn’t spend a lot of time at the apartment. None of them did—they were too busy with jobs and school. It made things easier. The apartment slept five comfortably, but was less comfortable when those five were awake and moving around. Though nobody said it, and as far as she knew there was no deadline for kicking them out, it was understood that this living situation was temporary.  
  
Annie was surprised by how much she liked her new job. Brew Ha Ha was a stereotypical indie cafe, operated and patronized by hipster college students who thrived on the notion that they were giving the middle finger to Starbucks—the kind of place Annie typically derided. And yet she found an unexpected charm in the creaky wooden floors, and the giant blackboard with the menu handwritten in neon chalk, and the canisters of lumpy, vegan cookies and organic dog biscuits (and if they weren’t labeled, Annie wouldn’t be able to tell them apart) wrapped in crinkly waxed paper.  
  
Here her asocial demeanor was mistaken for lofty contempt for the bourgeoisie and the feeble-minded masses, and customers and coworkers alike assumed she was some deep thinker, when more often than not, if she appeared to be lost in thought, she was wondering what was for dinner. Just like in high school, her frostiness attracted certain types—men (and more than a few women) flirted with her as a barista—but she found that she’d lost her interest in fucking for sport. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was scared the next time she took a man to bed she would have a flashback to The Thing That Never Happened, but that was the awful truth of it.  
  
Instead she threw herself into getting back to peak fighting condition, running five miles a day and spending as many hours at the dojo as her schedule would allow. It was her tried-and-true method: keep her body occupied to keep her mind in the present and the emptiness at bay. She had an extra burden now, guilt, but filling her every waking moment with activity helped ease that, too. It worked like a charm most of the time.  
  
But there were times when it didn’t.  
  
At work one day, Jeff Buckley’s _Hallelujah_ came on over the radio and Annie felt her stomach twist so painfully she had to take a five-minute break and step out for fresh air. While they were all eating breakfast together one morning, Bertolt reached across his bowl of Cap’n Crunch and brushed an eyelash from her cheek and her whole face broke out in a sweat as her skin remembered his fingertips. She thought for sure Reiner would notice something was wrong with her and ask what had happened, but he never did. Reiner remained oblivious to her act of betrayal.  
  
 _No. There hadn’t been any betrayal. It never happened._  
  
Annie would repeat the three-word denial over and over in her head until, with an exhale of frustration, she realized that thinking about how it didn’t happen was still thinking about it.  
  
And then there was Bertolt. Bertolt was doing just fine. Better than fine—he was thriving. Annie liked her job at the cafe well enough, but he genuinely loved working at the used bookstore and came home with nerdy stories of friendships forged over shared tastes in literature—like the patron who offered him a madeleine from a batch she’d just bought at the bakery next door and had segued it into a spirited discussion of Proust. He’d taken up cooking as a hobby and frequently prepared dinner for the five of them, on his own or collaborating with Marco, or on rare occasions assisting Jean as he was the only person Jean trusted to follow his exacting demands. He was getting pretty good, too.  
  
To Annie’s sharpest discernment, he continued to avoid alcohol; and yet he was sleeping better than he had in months, an improvement he attributed to his discovery (through one of his new bookstore chums, of course) of melatonin and valerian root.  
  
And he and Reiner were as thick as thieves, always seen joking and laughing and fervently debating the merits of the Starks versus the Targaryens. Having let Annie take the bedroom, they even shared a convertible sofa-bed every night. Their closeness (which really wasn’t anything new) made Annie happy but also vaguely anxious, though she couldn’t tell if it was because she thought Bertolt might tell Reiner what didn’t happen in that motel room or because she felt herself already being pushed out by the inchoate presence of the entity known as ReiBert.  
  
Bertolt was, by all observations, completely and utterly unaffected by what hadn’t (but actually had) happened between him and Annie. No too-long looks in her direction. No awkward withdrawal at an accidental touch. No wistful silences in which he might be thinking about it.  
  
During his climax, he had cried out that he loved her, and while Annie knew, of course, that he didn’t literally mean that he loved her—it wasn’t the first time she’d heard a man say those words when he came—she had taken it to mean that he’d enjoyed it. And yet however enjoyable the experience was, and whatever significance it may have had as his first time, he was able to forget it so easily. For him, it really hadn’t happened. It had meant nothing to him.  
  
This was good, Annie told herself. She asked for this. This was exactly what she’d wanted, what needed to happen.  
  
But the thought that sex with her had truly meant nothing to him was like a tiny, sharp sliver of glass inside her chest and it took her some uncomfortable meditation over the coffee grinder at work to figure out why. That night _had_ meant something to _her_ , and though she couldn’t distill precisely what that something was, it was not an insignificant something. It wasn’t so much the sex itself—though the sex had been strangely sweet—as it was all the talking that had preceded it. She had shared a bit of her heart with Bertolt that night, which was something she shared far less often and with far fewer people than her body. But they could never revisit that moment because it was too close to the horrible mistake, and as such was as good as obliterated.  
  
So Annie would bear it alone, silently. It never happened, or if it had, it had only happened for her. But all of them had their things that never happened—for that matter, everyone in the world did—things that affected them but that they never let show, like tattoos on their hearts. Reiner had Marcel B. Vogel, Bertolt had Roger Bailey, and Annie had Bertolt Hoover.  
  
She carried on. No attachments. No desires. No future.  
  
—  
  
On a Thursday, the first week in December, while hauling a bag trash to the dumpster behind Brew Ha Ha, Annie found herself suddenly dizzy, overwhelmed by the smells of coffee grounds and half-eaten cranberry-flaxseed muffins, and vomited the contents of her stomach onto the concrete. When she came back inside, Marco—who was always especially chuffed whenever they got to work a shift together—told her she looked pale and said she should sit down, have a glass of water. But Annie kept on working.  
  
It wasn’t the first sign that something was not right with her body, but it was the first one she’d realized was a sign. The others she only noticed in retrospect, analyzing them in her head as she made the peppermint mocha frappes and ginger-spice creme lattes and other seasonal offerings. She’d stopped having periods (but her cycles had never been anything close to regular, and she’d been running five miles a day—when she ran track in middle school she’d lost her periods for a full year). She’d gained five pounds (but that was muscle from working out and eating better, which was also why her jeans had gotten tighter). She’d thrown up last Saturday while on a jog (but that was because she ran too soon after breakfast). This incident beside the dumpster, though, had no sound explanation except one.  
  
Declining a ride home from Marco, she instead jogged straight from work to a drug store ten blocks away—the idea was to reduce the chances that somebody inside might recognize her as the girl who served them coffee. When she got home, she secreted the test at the bottom of her backpack on the top shelf in her closet. The directions said to take it first thing in the morning, so that’s what she would do.  
  
With so much to be anxious about, Annie assumed she wouldn’t get any sleep, but almost as soon as her head sank into the pillow, she was out, and when she woke up in the morning—dazed like she’d just emerged from a coma—she noted excessive tiredness as another ominous sign.  
  
It was eight o’clock, which was later than she normally woke, and all four boys were already up and in the kitchen: Reiner, Jean, and Marco seated at the table and Bertolt at the stove, attending to a frypan in an apron with the slogan "Real Men Cook" printed on it. The others were all dressed for the day but Annie joined them in her flannel pajama pants and secondhand t-shirt. Usually she was the first one awake, out the door for a run while Reiner and Bertolt were still sound asleep (the latter often halfway fallen off the sofa-bed).  
  
“I made pancakes,” Bertolt said. “Everyone else is almost finished, but I made sure to make some for you.”  
  
Annie sat down at the table in front of an empty plate that had presumably been set out for her, and Bertolt brought over a platter of pancakes and nudged the short stack onto her plate with a spatula. “Thanks,” she said, still groggy.  
  
 _Eating your pancakes is where my trouble started_ , she thought, because it amused her—though really she had no idea what role, if any, him trading entrees with her at Levi’s Pancake Shack played in the chain of events that had led her to this point. Tracing her mistakes back to their origin was a fruitless endeavor in the end. She couldn’t change the past.  
  
She ate silently and was relieved when some overheard conversation revealed that all of the boys would be leaving shortly for work and school while she didn’t have to be at Brew Ha Ha until noon. There would be nobody else in the apartment when she carried out the dreadful task.  
  
While she was rinsing off her plate in the kitchen sink—after Jean and Marco had already left and her own boys were finishing their morning routines—Annie sensed someone behind her and turned to find Reiner, arms crossed over his chest, looking at her with a rare sternness.  
  
“Annie, I need to talk to you about something.” His voice was low and serious.  
  
She swallowed and asked, as coolly as she could, “About what?”  
  
“About Bertolt,” he said, kicking Annie’s heartbeat up to a trot. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for a while.” A cantor. “Bertolt told me what you did to him when the two of you stayed in that motel together.” A wild gallop.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied, pores opening to bath her skin in terror sweat, mind keeling like a ship in a storm.  
  
“You know damn well what I’m talking about, Annie! Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”  
  
“Well I—” No good, her tongue had turned to jelly.  
  
“You gave him morphine and told him it was aspirin. What were you thinking? You don’t just give people narcotics without their knowledge. That stuff is dangerous, Annie. There’s a reason you need a prescription to get it—a prescription you don’t have, which also makes it illegal and potentially impure. You have no idea what kind of shit might have been in that morphine.”  
  
Struck temporarily dumb from the shock and relief of this accusation, Annie just stared at him for a second and then said, “Actually, it was Dilaudid.”  
  
“I don’t care what it was!” Reiner said with enough bite to make her flinch. “Look, I don’t care if you do that kind of thing with the guys you date, but Bertl deserves better than that.”  
  
There was a lump in Annie’s throat and her sweat had turned cold—she hadn’t felt guilty about it before, but maybe she should have. “Is he really that mad at me?”  
  
Reiner’s anger receded visibly and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, no. He’s not actually mad at all.” Then, with a mild resurgence, “But that doesn’t mean I’m not. Don’t treat him like one of your boy toys, Annie. Okay?”  
  
“Fine,” she said. She wanted him to leave; too many wretched things were stirring inside her brain, and her bladder ached from holding in her pee too long. “I will be more thoughtful, I promise.” If he knew how much of a boy toy she'd made of Bertl he might disown her.  
  
“Good,” he said and thankfully said no more until he and Bertolt left together, wishing her a pleasant day.

  
  
Alone at last, she retrieved the test and shut herself in the bathroom, locking the door just to be safe from any “Oops, I forgot something” returns. She stared at the test stick while waiting for the results—none of that hold-your-breath, lift-up-the-lid, Big Reveal bullshit for her. According to the box, results would appear after five minutes, but Annie’s test turned positive after just two, the indicator line blooming an aggressive shade of pink—as if it were telling her she wasn’t just pregnant, she was _very_ pregnant.  
  
With her back against the wall, she sank down to the bathroom’s clean tile floor and just sat there, still holding the test in her hand. Before this moment she had been paradoxically divided: half of her being one-hundred percent assured that it couldn’t be true and half of her having known the truth even before she had puked yesterday.  
  
She was pregnant and Bertolt was the father. The hilarity of it was, for all of Annie’s denial of his claim that she didn’t see him as a man, on some level it must have been true because she never once considered the possibility that he could get her pregnant. Well, the joke was on her because she wound up with his baby inside her. It was almost enough to make her break out in a fit of deranged laughter right there on the bathroom floor. She’d had a cache of condoms in her fucking designer knockoff purse, literally just five feet away, and it never occurred to her to use one. She’d even told him she was always careful in every way. Ha!  
  
What she had to do now, though, wasn’t funny in the least. It filled her with a horrible, roiling queasiness just to think about it—scrubbed down halls with their silvery medicinal reek, a stranger in a white coat and latex gloves, a tray of gleaming metal instruments to scrape her out and leave her empty.  
  
Terrifying as it was, she had to act soon; she was already almost three months along, a whole fucking trimester. How had she not realized it sooner? How had she been so oblivious to what was happening inside her own body? Her awareness was new, but what was growing in her belly had been there this whole time. For three months she’d force fed herself on the mantra that _it never happened_ and here was this tiny witness inside her saying: _It happened! It happened! It happened!_ Only it had been too quiet for her to hear until now.  
  
She had to get rid of it. Annie had always been pro-choice, and did not miss the irony that she had no choice when she found herself in the hypothetical situation central to those debates. In a way, it was for the best that she had to take care of it so quickly because it would be easier to keep herself from feeling any emotions for what was inside her. Ideally, yes, a woman should get to make this decision based on her own feelings, but for Annie it was a cold, intellectual necessity with no room for emotional interference. She was a runaway, earning the meager wages of a barista and living in an apartment with four other people—even without factoring in the complicating detail that it was Bertolt’s, there was no way she could have a baby. And besides all that, she didn’t even like children.  
  
For a few more seconds she sat on the floor, letting the next steps take shape in her brain. Then, with grim resolve, she stood up, only noticing now that her hand was settled (protectively) over her stomach.  
  
Before her shift at the coffee shop, she went for a long run, taking with her the pregnancy test, the box it came in, the bag from the drug store, and the receipt to deposit in a public trashcan far away from the apartment. A city park seemed like a good place to dump it. While she was there, she stopped at a bank of pay phones and, with a squirming stomach, placed a call to Planned Parenthood. Apparently it wasn’t a matter of simply scheduling an abortion; you had to get a medical assessment first and the earliest appointment she could get was on Monday. It could have been worse, though: if you were under eighteen, you needed a signature from a parent or legal guardian—thank goodness for Reiner and his foresight with the fake IDs (even though this was probably not quite the scenario he had in mind when he decided to give her an extra year).  
  
When she arrived at work, Marco greeted her with one of his brilliant, freckled smiles. “Hey Annie! We get a few hours of overlap today. Isn't it great?”  
  
“Yep,” she said, very conscious of her voice and body language and wondering if they were the same as usual because she felt different. Worrying was probably unnecessary—what was one more secret to keep, on top of so many others?  
  
Brew Ha Ha was decorated festively already, with a Christmas tree—not an artificial one but a genuine frasier fir, decked out in twinkling lights and papier mache ornaments made by art school students—in one corner, a Menorah and Kinara on the counter, miniature Gåvle Goats on the tables, and mistletoe hanging in clumps from the ceiling. The handcrafted treats for humans and canines were likewise holiday themed, cut into snowflake and tree and Star of David shapes, iced and sprinkled in white and blue and red and green.  
  
The music—piped in through a small, old radio set on a high shelf and cranked up loud—was not seasonal. Annie took her place behind the register and heard the lyrics spilling out:  
  
 _Someone's going to have to explain it to me;_  
 _I'm not sure what it means;_  
 _My baby's feeling funny in the morning;_  
 _She's having trouble getting into her jeans._  
  
“Excuse me one moment,” she said to the customer at the front of the line, a hipster girl in a purple crocheted beanie. Then she grabbed a rock-hard dog biscuit from the jar and threw it with perfect aim, knocking the radio to the wood floor where it broke into three pieces with a clatter and went silent.  
  
“Hell yeah,” said the girl in the beanie, her voice bearing the lazy drawl of a habitual pot-smoker. “Way to give it to Jackson Browne for beating up Daryl Hannah.”  
  
—  
  
Annie made it through the weekend the same way she'd made it through the last three months, though somewhat less successfully—no amount of jogging or judo or Krav Maga or savate, or making pointlessly complex coffee drinks could keep her mind from the contents of her uterus and what was going to happen to it. It took all of her self-control not to do a search online and find out how big it was, what it looked like now. In the shower, her hands wandered to her abdomen, gliding on a slick film of soap to palpate the firmness she’d mistaken for growing muscle. Her curiosity was dangerous—if she let herself think about what was inside of her she might discover feelings that would make what she had to do so much more difficult.

It was hard enough already.  
  
On Saturday night, when Bertolt made spaghetti and meatballs—his recipe, he proclaimed, finally perfected—and Marco said he would make an awesome dad someday, Annie’s chest had tightened with such a violent spasm that for a few frightening moments she couldn’t breath. But nobody noticed. Bertolt had, quite adorably, blushed a faint pink at the compliment and offered a soft, self-conscious reply: “Maybe. Someday. I don’t know. But thanks, Marco.”  
  
Looking at Bertolt, happy and peaceful, conjured an incomprehensible sadness in Annie. He would never know that she’d been pregnant with his child, nor would he want to—it wouldn’t cause him any grief; just stress and he didn’t need that. And yet some diseased part of her longed to tell him everything and for him to embrace her, wrap her up in his long arms and tell her it would be okay, that it wasn’t her fault (even though she knew that it was). It was a warped and pathetic need and she blamed it on the potent cocktail of hormones coursing through her, hormones that would very soon be purged from her system.

  
Monday came and Annie sat in the waiting room at Planned Parenthood, worrying the hem of her hoodie with sweaty little hands. Of the three other women who occupied chairs like hers, two had hugely rounded bellies, which surprised Annie as she’d only ever thought of Planned Parenthood as a place where women came when they needed to _not_ be pregnant.  
  
She didn’t want to be here. She imagined herself as the girl from _Fast Times at Ridgemont High_ (another one of Mom’s godawful 1980s “classics”), who got an abortion unbeknownst to her parents and was picked up afterwards by her surprisingly kind and understanding older brother. Well that bit would definitely not be happening here.  
  
Her eyes scanned an array of magazines— _Women’s Health, Prevention, Self, Shape_ : none of them less than 6 months old—on the table next to her and then glanced up at the clock on the wall, which had moved forward only thirty seconds since the last time she’d looked. A woman sitting two chairs away—the one who wasn’t visibly pregnant—tattooed an anxious beat on the linoleum floor with the toe of her shoe and Annie wondered if she was here for the same reason as herself.  
  
“Ms. Leonard?” Annie turned to the sound of her (almost) last name. “You can come back now.”  
  
The summons came from a prim woman in a white lab coat over ciel blue scrubs who was standing in the opened door that led back into the bleached bowels of the establishment. She was short (though taller than Annie), with ash blond hair and dark-framed glasses and a sharp, inscrutable little mouth.  
  
“I’m Dr. Rico Brzenska,” the woman said, voice calm and emotionless, as Annie approached her with small, unsure steps. “If you’ll just follow me—” She ushered Annie through the door, closed it, and immediately turned around to walk down the hallway on clicking heels.  
  
Annie followed Dr. Brzenska, eventually arriving in a chilly, claustrophobic room with walls painted a pale mint green. In the center of the room was an examination table covered in white paper, which ran from a spool underneath for easy refreshing, and extending from one end of the table were a sinister pair of stirrups. A shiver unrelated to the cold of the room danced down Annie’s spine—there was something menacing about those outspread metal contraptions, like a Czech hedgehog on Normandy Beach.  
  
“You may have a seat,” the doctor said, which Annie did, perching warily between the stirrups. “I’ve got the information from your initial call, so I know why you are here today. This is just a routine preliminary exam—mostly just asking questions—to determine how far along you are before we schedule your procedure.”  
  
“Twelve weeks,” Annie blurted out nervously. If they just needed to know how pregnant she was, she could have said so over the phone.  
  
“Twelve weeks since your last period?” Dr. Brzenska asked.  
  
“I don’t remember when my last period was, but it was twelve weeks ago that I—” She couldn’t say the word conceived; it didn’t fit what had happened that night. In a stormy burst of violet-tinted memory, she saw Bertolt stretched naked beneath her, heard his breathy moans, and felt his hands knead her bottom, but her brain went fuzzy when it tried to link that event to this one.  
  
“Well, pregnancy is measured from the start of your last period, so I will put you down as fourteen weeks.” The doctor had an electronic tablet instead of a clipboard—apparently St. Louis Planned Parenthood was well-funded—and she recorded the information Annie provided with quick taps of a stylus.  
  
More invasive questions followed: Had she ever been pregnant before? Had she had any previous miscarriages or abortions? Was she on the pill? Did she drink? Smoke? Do drugs? How many sexual partners had she had in the last two years? (That one Annie had to lie about because, to her chagrin, she had lost count).  
  
With each question, the mint green walls seemed to contract tighter around her, the air grew thinner, her skin grew colder and clammier. She wanted this over with. She wanted to leave.  
  
“Alright, that’s the last question,” Dr. Brzenska said at last. “I can schedule your procedure for this week if you’d like.”  
  
“I—” Where were her words? Why couldn’t she answer?  
  
The doctor looked at her with concern, the first compassion she’d shown, and even went so far as to touch Annie on the arm. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ms. Leonard?”  
  
“I don’t know.” The words came out wet and spluttery, as if on the breaching edge of tears. “I have to do this. I don’t have a choice.”  
  
“Ms. Leonard, you do have a choice.”  
  
Annie was shaking but didn’t cry as she feared she might. The hand on her arm stayed on her arm even as she sat in silence, desperately trying to recompose herself. Her eyes moved around the room, but everything they alighted on just made her more distraught—a half-full container for used hypodermics with a threatening biohazard symbol on the side, boxes of latex gloves with their contents leaking out like tentacles, one of those kidney-shaped trays for catching vomit. And then she saw the machine pushed against one wall on a wheeled cart; it had a screen and Annie knew what it was.  
  
“I want to see it,” she said softly.  
  
“Hmm?” the doctor asked.  
  
“There’s an ultrasound machine over there,” said Annie. “I want to see the baby. Can I see it?”  
  
Dr. Brzenska’s mouth pursed briefly. “Yes,” she said, her tone indicating that there was a caveat attached. “Are you sure that’s what you want, Ms. Leonard?” It almost sounded like discouragement.  
  
Annie nodded. “Yes.” She might be making a huge mistake, but if she didn’t, she knew she would regret it.  
  
“Alright,” said the doctor, with an unspoken _don’t blame me_ on the end. “Scoot up, lift your shirt, and undo the top button on your jeans."  
  
Annie did as she was told while Brzenska wheeled over the ultrasound and turned down the lights.  
  
“It might tickle a bit,” said the doctor. She squirted out a blob of warmed gel from a tube onto Annie’s stomach and pressed the transducer probe into it. “It can take some searching to find the baby at this stage, even in a woman as small as you.” After a full minute of prodding (and yes, it did tickle), the machine began to emit a soft, fast whooshing sound. The doctor held the probe steady and said, “There, take a look.”  
  
Annie turned her head to look at the monitor.  
  
 _Oh—_  
  
It was a perfect profile, worthy of the Discovery Channel: domed forehead, jut of chin and nose (this baby would have quite a nose), curled body barely bigger than its head, a spindly bent leg and a bud of an arm. It moved on the screen—just a tiny flutter of motion, still too small to cause any physical sensation inside of her.

And the sound: _whub-whub-whub-whub-whub._  
  
“Is that the heartbeat?” Annie asked, and when the doctor nodded said, “It’s so fast.”  
  
“That’s normal.”  
  
Annie stared at the screen, transfixed. _Shit,_ she thought. _Shit._ Because she felt an emotion and felt it strongly. It wasn’t instant maternal love. Nothing that warm and fuzzy. It wasn’t even a sense of awe or fascination. Not exactly. What she felt was a kind of fierce possessiveness, a sudden recognition that what she saw belonged to her. _Well, what do you know, that’s my baby._  
  
That was her baby on the screen. And that sound was her baby’s heartbeat.  
  
With a tidal wave of joyful terror, she understood that she was going to keep it. There were so many legitimate reasons not to have this baby and only one reason to have it: it was hers and she wanted it—but that single reason was going to win in the end. She was attached, irrevocably.  
  
“Are you going to schedule your procedure today, Ms. Leonard,” Dr. Brzenska asked. “Or would you like to wait?” Her wording was very careful and evinced that she had dealt with these types of situations many times.  
  
“I’ll wait,” Annie said, but really she wasn’t ever going to schedule it and the doctor probably knew that.  
  
“That’s fine, Ms. Leonard. Just remember that if you do decide to terminate, it has to be within the next six weeks.”  
  
Bobbing her head absently, Annie said, “I understand.” Her eyes were still looking at the cloudy, monochromatic display, watching the flickering spot at the center of her baby's little chest. “Could you, maybe, print me out a picture?”  
  
—  
  
Annie walked home—she didn’t have work today so there was no need to hurry—with the picture of her baby folded in quarters and tucked in her back pocket. She felt the new life her body was growing like a warm glow inside of her, the tiny heart she couldn't hear but knew was beating. It was scary and exhilarating. Everything was going to change.  
  
She was going to have to own up to what had happened. It _had_ happened. She’d had sex with Bertolt, her most precious friend and the man her big brother was in love with. And that act—whether right or wrong—had started a baby, and she was going to keep that baby.  
  
Telling Reiner didn’t worry her now as much as it had earlier. He’d been so furious with her over a tiny little pill that she couldn’t imagine how mad at her he’d be if he learned the full extent of what happened between her and Bertolt. But now there was going to be a baby and Reiner would love her baby. As macho as he was, Reiner had a soft spot for children outdone only by his soft spots for his little sister and for Bertolt Hoover. So naturally a child that came from the two of them would have its uncle’s heart from the get-go. And it would be more than just avuncular affection: Reiner would love Bertolt’s baby as if it were his, too.  
  
Bertolt presented the bigger challenge. Annie had no idea how he would react to the news or even how to tell him. _“Oh hey, remember that sex that never happened? Of course not. It never happened. Well, congratulations, you’re going to be a father.”_ No, that would not be the best approach. Were congratulations even appropriate? Would he be at all happy about it?  
  
He’d said “maybe” and “someday” to the idea of fatherhood, but even if he’d meant it—and there was no verification that he had—he didn’t want to have a baby at nineteen, and certainly not with her.  
  
But Annie realized that she desperately wanted him to be happy about it, or at least okay with it. She missed Bertolt. For the past three months there had been a distance between them, this unspeakable event that made her avoid getting too close to him. But once the whole truth was out, they could reclaim the former intimacy of their friendship. Deeper than that—they were going to have a baby together, and if Bertolt wanted, they would raise it together. This baby would bind her to him even if he rejected it, just like Mom was still bound to Dad and also to the unknown man, living or dead, who had fathered Reiner.  
  
Then again, Annie was already bound to Bertolt. From the moment she decided to run away with him and Reiner—no, earlier: from the moment she’d told him to jump to their balcony—her life had been twined with his. It was somehow fitting that he would be the father of her baby and she wanted so badly for him to be a part of this baby's life. Her baby, Bertolt's baby, their baby together. Marco was right, he really would make a great dad, as long as he continued to stay away from alcohol.

Annie wondered how she would do as a mom. It was a role she never imagined herself in, and one that nobody who knew her would have predicted for her—even Reiner had once said that he couldn't see her with kids—but she was determined to do the best she could and maybe she would surprise everyone. There were shelves and shelves of books in any library or bookstore about how to raise children, and though Annie wasn't sure if she would turn to such resources, it was reassuring to know that they were out there and that she had time to consult them.  
  
First things first: she needed to find a better job, one with health insurance. Maybe Marco could help her with that, though he already had done so much for her. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to ask.  
  
—  
  
“Oh you should talk to Jean about that,” Marco said brightly when Annie spoke to him in private about finding a better paying job.  
  
She gave him a skeptical look. “Jean? No offense, but what would he know? He’s the only one in the apartment who doesn’t have a job. Aren’t his parents rich?”  
  
It was late Tuesday morning and they were sitting in a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop a block away from Brew Ha Ha, having lunch together before she had a shift and he had an afternoon class (Marco was majoring in social work, go figure). The place was known for ridiculously large subs stuffed with extravagant, seemingly discordant toppings—marinated tofu, peach chutney, roasted banana ketchup, etc.—and Annie, suddenly ravenous since learning she was pregnant, was already halfway through hers.  
  
“They are now,” Marco said. “But that’s because they won the lottery a little over a year ago. Before that, they were actually not doing so well. I mean, I’ve been friends with Jean since high school and his family was always working class, but then the recession hit and his dad lost his job. Jean is actually behind me in college because he had to work for a year before starting. And then his folks won the lottery. Not the super-mega jackpot, but a pretty substantial one.”  
  
“Wow,” Annie said around a mouthful of sandwich (thank goodness Marco didn’t care about table manners). “I had no idea.”  
  
Marco sighed, but affectionately. “Yeah, Jean has his pride, but he really does know what it’s like to be an ordinary person struggling to get by in the world. And he knows tons about job hunting and resumes and interviews. Heck, he’s the one who got you three the jobs you have now.”  
  
Annie was stunned. “Really? And you really think Jean would help me out with this?”  
  
“Help you out with what?” Jean said as he slid into the booth next to Marco and reached to take an onion ring off his plate.  
  
“She wants a job with health benefits,” Marco said, which was the extent of what Annie had told him—she could probably trust him with her secret but had decided to wait at least until after she’d told Bertolt.  
  
“Oh, well I can probably help you out with that. Yes.” Jean wasn’t looking at her, but at Marco’s barely eaten sandwich, which he was sawing in two with a knife. “I’m taking half of this,” he said.  
  
“That’s fine,” Marco said with a good-humored laugh. “I couldn’t eat the whole thing anyway.”  
  
At that moment Annie had just finished the last bite of hers and was sucking a blob of chutney off her thumb. “So you’ll really help me, Jean?”  
  
He whickered, and told her, with half-hearted irritation, “I said that I would.”  
  
“Thanks,” said Annie. As she watched the two of them sharing a sub sandwich, sitting shoulder to shoulder, she felt an upwelling of fondness for them, and also had an urge to ask if they were dating but she was able to suppress that.  
  
After lunch, she said goodbye to Jean and Marco and headed for work feeling more optimistic than she had in too long to remember. For the first time in years she found herself thinking about the future, envisioning what her life could be. She crossed the street and didn’t see the truck that was making an illegal turn.  
  
She flew: the truck’s grill caught her right in the stomach and knocked her out of her shoes, flung her like a rag doll. For a moment she felt time stop while she was suspended in the air and she knew what had happened but the pain hadn’t reached her body yet. She slammed into the asphalt, shoulder first, and rolled, skin scraping off as she skidded to a halt. And then there were voices, high and loud and panicked.  
  
“Annie, look at me.”  
  
It was Marco. His face appeared, hovering over her, and the sun hit it from one side, casting the other into darkness. And Annie was certain that she was dead and that he must be another corpse, half-consumed by the fires of Hell that were now licking over her body. But wait, why would Marco be in Hell?  
  
“Stay with me, Annie,” he whispered, voice tremulous. “Please, stay with me.”  
  
But Annie sank into blackness. She emerged only once and then only briefly in the back of an ambulance. Body immobilized, her eyes looked down and saw her lap aproned in dark blood, but couldn’t see where it was coming from. A paramedic asked her rapidly if she had any drug allergies, any medical conditions they should know about.  
  
“I’m pregnant,” she whimpered, feeling hot tears spill down her temples before she slipped away again.  
  
—  
  
She dreamed of Dad for the first time in years. They were walking in the park together: the old park where Brutus the doberman struck fear into the hearts of young and old; but Annie wasn’t scared because she was with Dad. Her hand was the tiny hand of a child inside his, which was big and warm and soft as leather. But she couldn’t see his face and then her hand slipped out of his and he was falling away, down into a yawning abyss that had appeared out of nowhere in the lush spring grass of the park. She screamed for him but a different name came out and she woke up.  
  
Somebody _was_ holding her hand.  
  
“Reiner,” she said, her voice tiny and weak.  
  
“Hey,” he replied softly, achingly sweet. “Sorry I’m not who you called for.”  
  
She blinked a few times to try to clear the drowsiness from her head but it stayed, a narcotic haze that made everything around her—even Reiner’s gentle face—appear to shimmer very faintly. There was a curtain around the bed and there were tubes and wires connected to her body and something was blipping steadily nearby. Besides the fact that she was in a hospital, Annie knew three things for certain: she was alive, she had been in a car accident, and she wasn’t pregnant anymore.  
  
“Who did I call for?” she asked.  
  
Reiner gave her a sad smile. “Mom.”  
  
Mom? Why would she be asking for Mom? It didn’t make sense. And then all at once she felt it, an inexplicable biological need for her mother so powerful it almost made her burst into tears. “I wish she were here,” she said.  
  
“Me too,” said Reiner. He squeezed her hand and rubbed his thumb in soothing circles on her palm. “How do you feel?”  
  
“Numb,” she said, but the answer she thought was _empty_. And she wasn’t completely numb—she still felt like she’d been flattened by a steamroller. “I guess they’ve got me pretty doped up. Surprised I’m not more nauseated.” She was a little nauseated.  
  
“Yeah,” Reiner said, smiling—maybe it was a forced smile, but he made it look natural. “You’re on some strong stuff since coming out of surgery.”  
  
“Surgery?” How long had she been out of it?  
  
The smile turned to a calm, serious face. “You had some pretty bad internal injuries, Annie. They wouldn’t tell me all the details, since according to your ID you’re over eighteen, and I’m not your legal guardian anyway. But you were in surgery for several hours and then you slept for like ten more.”  
  
“What? What time is it?”  
  
“After midnight,” said Reiner.  
  
“And you’ve been here the whole time?”  
  
“Where else would I go?”  
  
There was a rustling sound as the curtain drew back and a doctor appeared. She had wavy brown hair and wore a name badge that said Renee and was decorated with butterfly stickers.  
  
“It’s nice to see you awake, Ms. Leonard. Your brother has been keeping a bedside vigil. So, do you feel up to talking for a few minutes.”  
  
“I think so,” said Annie—Renee had a non-threatening aura that made her feel open to it.  
  
“Would you like your brother to stay while I discuss your condition?” Renee asked.  
  
Annie bobbed her head. Reiner would find out about the baby, but she couldn’t bear the thought of having to let go of his hand yet. Might as well get it out early. “I had a miscarriage,” she said, and as she did it felt like a fist was tightening painfully around her heart, but she kept her voice neutral.  
  
“I’m afraid so,” said Renee, but Annie’s eyes were on Reiner, trying to read his reaction and finding him uncharacteristically blank. “It’s a bit more complicated than just that, Ms. Leonard. Your pelvis was broken and your uterus ruptured.”  
  
Now Reiner’s face showed fear.  
  
“Ruptured?” Annie asked.  
  
“Luckily, you were rushed into surgery in time to save it,” said Renee. “They had to remove one of your fallopian tubes, though.”  
  
 _Nothing could have saved my baby_ , Annie thought. “So what does this mean?” she asked, feeling suddenly tired. “Can I still have children?” She asked because it felt like what she was supposed to ask.  
  
Renee got a grave look on her face. “Well, it’s hard to tell just now since your body is still healing, but the nature of your injury means that there will be significant scarring, which will interfere with conceiving and carrying children in the future.”  
  
“Interfere how?” Annie asked. “Give it to me straight, doc?” That was something she’d always secretly wanted to say, but it brought her no satisfaction now.  
  
“Realistically, I’d say the chances of you getting pregnant naturally are about one in a thousand. And that’s a generous estimate. The chances of carrying to term are harder to predict.” Renee paused and put on a sympathetic smile. “But you still have your ovaries so if you do want children in the future you can always use in vitro and a surrogate. You really shouldn’t be worried about it now, though, your healing has only just begun.”  
  
Future children didn’t fit inside Annie’s brain at this time. “Right,” she said. “You know what, I’m feeling more beat than I thought. Can I go back to sleep?”  
  
“Of course,” said Renee. “There will be time to talk about all of this later. You just get your rest and press the buzzer if you need anything.”  
  
“Thanks,” said Annie. “I will.”  
  
Dr. Renee—whose last name wasn’t mentioned during the entire conversation—left and it was just Annie and Reiner again.  
  
“Are you going to tell me about it?” he asked, still holding her hand.  
  
“There’s nothing to tell. I was going to get rid of it anyways but the truck took care of it for me. It’s not like I’m sad about it.” The lie tasted like ashes in her mouth.  
  
“Who did it?”  
  
“Just some waiter at a pancake shack. A one-night stand and nothing more.”  
  
Reiner nodded and lifted her hand to his mouth, kissing her knuckles. “Okay. You know all I care about is that you’re okay. So, uh, are you going to let Bertolt see you? I only ask because he’s been out in the waiting room since noon.”  
  
“What? He has? But he was supposed to be at work until five today.”  
  
Reiner shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “What can I say? As soon as he heard you’d been in an accident, he ran out of the bookstore mid-shift and sprinted all the way to the hospital—like twenty blocks—and collapsed in a puddle of sweat when he got here. The ER docs thought he was a patient.”  
  
“He did that?” Annie could hardly believe it. “But what about his job?”  
  
“He was fired,” Reiner said simply.  
  
“But he loved that job. It made him so happy.”  
  
“You're more important to him than some job, Annie. Besides, I don’t think he’s as happy in St. Louis as he wants everyone to think. He’s been trying way too hard ever since we got here.”  
  
Annie swallowed thickly. Was that true? Was Bertl unhappy? How could her brother read him so well? Because he was in love? There were too many questions she couldn’t ask. “You won’t tell him that I was pregnant, will you?”  
  
“Afraid he’ll want to track down this pancake waiter and beat the shit out of him?” Reiner said with a smirk, which fell almost instantly afterwards as he undoubtedly was reminded of what had happened to Roger Bailey. “Of course I won’t tell him,” he said more seriously. “Even though I really don’t think he would react that badly to the information. He knows that you have sex with men and he’s made his peace with it.”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Annie didn’t understand. All the drugs pumping through her were making her brain dull and sluggish. “Why would he need to make peace with it?”  
  
Reiner raked his free hand through his thicket of blond hair and drew in a breath through his teeth. There was reluctance on his face, and pain, too—whatever he was setting up to say was not easy for him. “Annie—shit, I’ve said too much. Forget what I just said. It’s not something for me to tell anyways. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except that you are okay, Annie. So do you want to see Bertolt before you go back to sleep?”  
  
Yes, she wanted to see Bertolt. She wanted him right here by her side, holding her other hand. She wanted to fall asleep to the sound of him singing.  
  
 _There was a time when you let me know;_  
 _What's really going on below;_  
 _But now you never show it to me, do you?_  
 _And remember when I moved in you;_  
 _The holy dove was moving too;_  
 _And every breath we drew was Hallelujah._  
  
But she was too scared of what she might say when she saw him in her post-traumatic, painkiller-addled state. Too scared of what she might feel when she looked into his eyes—would her baby have had those beautiful green eyes?  
  
“No,” she said quietly. “And you should go home too, Reiner. You need some rest for yourself. But tell Bertolt—tell him I’m doing fine and that I’m happy he came to see me. Oh, and maybe take him out for a drink or something when you both feel up to it. The poor guy lost his job.”  
  
“Alright, Annie. Are you sure you want me to go?”  
  
“I’m sure, Reiner. I’ll just be sleeping anyways.”  
  
When he let go of her hand it felt shockingly cold. He stood and then bent down, brushing the hair from her forehead and kissing it very tenderly. “Feel better, Annie. And if you ever need to talk about it, I’ll listen. That’s what big brothers are for, after all.” He started walking away but stopped after a couple steps and looked back at her. “Oh, and Annie?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
“I love you too, Reiner.”

  
Alone again—truly alone—Annie slid her hand under the blanket and over the bruised sack of her body. Her hips were stabilized in some sort of harness—oh yeah, hadn’t the doctor said something about a broken pelvis?—but she could still rest her hand right over the spot where nothing grew anymore, where nothing would ever grow again, like a patch of salted earth. She didn’t care about future children, though; she’d only wanted this one.  
  
How was it possible that something she was only aware of for less than a week had managed to shatter all of the cardinal rules that sustained her? No attachments. No desires. No future. She'd wanted the baby so badly—it was only now sinking in just how badly. She'd wanted it more than she'd realized until after it was gone. Gone. Her baby was gone. Gone before it even got to be a baby. It was a bright, fleeting presence in her life, here and gone like a firefly: a hardness in her belly, a fuzzy shape on a screen, a tiny racing heartbeat—and it belonged to her alone. This was the tattoo on her heart.  
  
Reiner knew she’d been pregnant. Bertolt knew that the two of them had sex. But only Annie knew—would ever know—the whole story. She had a secret from each of them now, and it felt like a layer of stone around her, isolating her from them.  
  
It really was like it never happened.  
  
She turned her head to the side and filled her pillow with silent, quaking sobs. How could she be so heartbroken over something that never happened?

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you liked it. If it made you feel something, I'll consider it a success.
> 
> The reference to Jackson Browne beating up Daryl Hannah is because my mom mentions it every time one of his songs comes on the radio.
> 
> I think I may wait a bit before starting Part 6 because I am going to Japan in March and really need to study my Japanese.


End file.
